Note to Aldous Huxley: Wherever you go, there you are

Per this Vice piece, contra Aldous Huxley and "Island," his 1962 anti-quel (how's that for a mash-up) to "Brave New World," psychedelics aren't a utopia and can't bring one about.

Contra also Timothy Leary, influenced in part by Huxley, per this Guardian piece that led to the first Vice piece. (Huxley went beyond his initial mescaline to LSD.) Contra (somewhat, hold on to that) Michael Pollan. Contra Black Lives Matter.

One of Vice's good counterpoints is the CIA's use of LSD in MK-ULTRA. QAnon "shaman" Jake Angeli dropped psychedelics. The Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh incorporated them into his cult.

People evil, whether lawful evil, neutral evil or downright evil, can use psychedelics to their own ends.

Anthropologist David Dupuis compares them to pluripotent stem cells that can turn into all sorts of body cells. So, psychedelics can promote all sorts of psyches.

They are also becoming one of the latest vulture capitalism focuses of tech dudebros, broligarchs, whatever your term. 

This second Vice piece has a further word of caution.

That's that psychedelics aren't necessarily a magical mystery tour for fixing depression and other mental health problems.

The psychologist interviewed in the piece notes that a good cautionary starting point is that counselors should not project their own beliefs about mystical experiences — and their alleged therapeutic benefits — onto clients. That's because, in part, the counselor "you" is not the client "you" and is not going where they are. 

In an interview for most the piece, Australian philosopher Chris Letheby talks about the "comforting delusion" that they may offer, and (pick up that thought) Letheby does cite Pollan, wondering if psychedelics offer nothing but a comforting delusion in their mystical experiences. I think that for many, they do. But not everybody.

I know science writer John Horgan, who has done ayahuasca, and some other substances. I think he "accepted" his experiences, and had a degree of what others would call "mystical," but returned to his normal state of consciousness normally grounded. But, that's the self he brings.

The self of scientific naturalism, which Letheby also discusses. 

As for Huxley and the self-help phrase? The Guardian piece notes that "Doors of Perception," about his mescaline, may in part have been about his trying to deny that he was semi-blind. 

Whether totally true or not, since Letheby also indicated he's sympathetic to the Buddhist idea of no-self, I wish he would have picked up more on the "wherever you go" idea. 

As for its take on "Island"? It's been a long time since I read that. I do recall, at a minimum, that it didn't really float my boat. 

The varieties of free will – and determinism – not worth discussing

This is a lightly updated version of a piece at my main blog site.

To riff on Dan Dennett, in part, with that title, that's my take on two paired essays by the same person, Gregg D. Caruso, a professor of philosophy at Corning Community College.

Somewhat in the first, and even more in the second, essay, he insists that free will — or certain types of free will — are connected with what he calls retributive justice.

(In all of this, I'm trying to practice the principle of charity to suss out the argument that I think Caruso actually is trying to make, which is discussed near the end. That said, I've only gotten there through repeated comments by him, and others. And, if I'm coming to a wrong conclusion by that principle of charity, then we have a bigger issue.)

That right there, the retributive justice, sounds like we're in John Rawls territory, but with the addition of explicitly connecting this to free will.

Should it be? Ethical naturalism is sometimes tied too closely too, or even conflated with, free will versus determinism.

Little Bobby Sapolsky committed this category mistake so badly that I spent a full 10,000 words crushing him. (And I thoroughly enjoyed it.)

In response to the second essay, specifically, and in connection with the issue of "retributive justice," I set out a laundry list of both logical and empirical or epistemological objections.

The logical one is that there is no logically necessary connection between the two. And, I wasn't alone on this, either. I said:

There may (or may not) be empirical connections, based on psychology; hence my references to neuroscience. But, that’s a different matter. 

It’s like reading Rawls as if Rawls trying to justify his ideas by appeal to certain versions of free will. And, what Rawls says about issues of ethics and justice has no logically necessary connection with free will. 

I can be a hardcore determinist, yet still believe in the value of retributive justice.
I can be a compatibilist, and believe in retributive justice. I can be a libertarian free willer and believe in… I can be some sort of free will optimist-skeptic and believe … I can be like I actually am, thinking the whole free will “versus” determinism issue wrongly framed …. 

and believe in retributive justice. 

Or, I can be any of the above, and reject that idea. 

Or, I can be any of the above, and reject the idea of objective morality in general.

His response?

Essentially to offer a stipulative definition of free will. 

Well, if someone wants to put forth a stipulative definition of free will that insists it contains free-will actions for which one can be held morally accountable, then I guess ethics and free will are logically connected, especially if one insists that that's a two-way if-and-only-if connection.

The two-way direction of an if-and-only-if is part of the key here.

Let's take the three main schools of normative ethics — consequentialism, deontology and virtue ethics.

The details of how to be ethical in consequentialism and deontological ethics are compatible with any school of thought on volition from the hardest of classical determinists to the most libertarian of free willers. Virtue ethics, in that it lays stress on the individual more, and the psychological stance of the individual, is seemingly incompatible with full-on determinism.

But, two of three major schools of normative ethics say that claims that ethical actions in general must be linked to free will are simply wrong.

And, given that justice is a subset of ethics, two of three major schools of normative ethics say that claims that ethical actions in general must be linked to free will are simply wrong.

Some people may think that a hard determinism dehumanizes people.

Actually not, or at least not necessarily. As long as determinism is applied to theories of ethics in a non-Randian way, it should treat all people as equally human. What that means for all people may be different than in a free will system, but, still, it's not proposing to treat all people like livestock or something. 

Beyond that, deontological ethics has as one of its core tenets the command to not dehumanize by treating people as means rather than ends. Beyond THAT are questions of what it means to be "human," whether versus being a chimpanzee, being a Homo erectus (if one doesn't count them as "human") and so forth. 

 

 That said, back to Caruso.

There seems to be further deck-stacking. And, rather than try to shoehorn comments into a 500-word limit at the time, there's my blog post, right here!

First, Caruso goes on to sometimes talk about "harsh retributive justice" or "just deserts." It's almost like he's at a pipe organ that has stops and ranks that are all conservative dogwhistles of some sort.

And, to boot, I think he knows that.

He talks about conservatives who believe in free will having harsher views on “just desserts” than those who don’t.

But, he doesn’t talk about political liberals and their stances on justice being influenced, or not, by their thoughts on free will

I doubt that most liberals reject free will. Rather, it’s either that they think it’s more attenuated by circumstances than conservatives do — but NOT obliterated by circumstance.

Related? An old chicken or egg argument — for conservatives, does insistence on free will come first, or a just world? To be honest, I don’t know if most conservatives even consider that.

The fact that Caruso only posts analysis of conservatives' relationship to free will and certain theories of justice makes me think he's pulling a Chris Mooney by implying that only conservatives, and not liberals, engage in motivated reasoning.

He also ignores that political conservatives in the rest of the developed world don't necessarily have a lot in common with US conservatives. (This, too, is a mistake Mooney also makes.) I do agree that religious overtones often influence discussions of free will, and theories of justice. But, again, religiosity, or lack thereof, is precisely where conservatives in the rest of the developed world most differ from their American compadres.

So, outside of America? False move, Prof. Caruso.

Back to the arguments against linking free will and theories of justice.

Walter Kaufmann’s book “Without Guilt and Justice” critiques Rawlsian theories of justice and ethics in general, and Rawls himself in particular. It rejects both “retributive” AND “distributive” justice alike, on other grounds. People are individuals, and we cannot treat them like data points in population genetics, therefore there is no way of being “fair.”

Thus, I can — and do — reject ideas of retributive justice in general based on anything that smacks of Rawls’ version of ….

Let’s call it liberal moral redistribution, with a deliberate riff on socialism, even communism, in that “redistribution.” And, that's quite deliberate, and yet another reason I call myself a skeptical left-liberal.

So, with Caruso, I reject (for now) retributive justice, but with a reason that is 180 degrees opposite of the reason that Caruso wants to reject retributive justice.

And, I do so without throwing out babies with the bathwater.

Then, we have what I’m going to call “folk philosophy,” paralleling “folk psychology,” on the issue of free will. And, frankly, I think some professional philosophers engage in it, too.

Caruso, while referencing Libet, doesn’t really appear to wrestle with the idea that neuroscience is still in the Early Bronze Age, if that. We’re going to need science to tell us more about consciousness in general, and volition in particular — without going down the road of scientism — before we can talk about free will in general with any great degree of clarity.

In addition to wrongly linking a cart and horse that doesn’t necessarily go together, Caruso is putting an ill-defined cart ahead of that horse.

And, again, it’s unnecessary. To riff on Gilbert Ryle's "category mistake," I am inventing the term "conjunctive mistake."

As I mentioned in my first comment to him on his first essay, I covered a lot of this — the uncertainties of talking about free will in all its glory — in the essay I did at Scientia Salon about saying “mu” to the idea of “free will vs. determinism.”

In that issue, like Caruso in his two essays and in other writings, wrestled not only with Libet, but also Daniel Wegner and others. Do we have a conscious free will in the classical sense? I think Wegner has, at a minimum, raised some good questions.

 

Update: Wegner's "The Illusion of Conscious Will" is reviewed by me here.

That said, if he's right, or to the degree that he's right, that doesn't leave some sort of determinism as a  default. And, that, in turn, gets me back to Caruso's thinking.

I think Caruso’s still stuck to a degree (but not necessarily a huge degree) of viewing this issue in terms of polarities.

Finally, as I also noted, consciousness is not a “hard” problem in the sense of David Chalmers. But it is, and will continue to be, a difficult problem, and we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.

As for that "conjunctive mistake"? Theories of ethics are complicated enough, even if we stay on the side of moral realism, without committing philosophical entanglement of mixing them with free will.

That said, to parse out Caruso.

You want to talk about more humanistic justice? Let's set aside free will. Here's my thoughts.

Can we adopt a less all-encompassing pragmatic utilitarianism toward justice? Yes. And we should.

If, without dehumanizing people, retributive justice has at least some value for the person upon whom it’s administered, as well as larger society, to the best our limited, non-Rawlsian point of view can tell, then retributive justice is what we need. (Note that this largely does not describe the current American retributive criminal justice system.)

If retributive justice doesn’t have such value, then we need to do something else.

Simple pragmatism. No particular stance on free will involved.

Does this treat people as “automatons”? I think not. It treats them as persons with some degree of freedom. On a free-will oriented stance, it can also lead to them being more conscious about “drivers” of their behavior. On a less free-will stance, it can simply work on those unconscious drivers, while offering the possibility of more, including possible enlightenment of their consciousness.

And that's not all. Caruso could have — and should have — brought in Daniel Kahnemann's "fast" vs. "slow" thinking into the issue. Even without tying it directly to free will, it would directly tie to issues of degrees of consciousness. But, it didn't.

Back to the logical disjunction. It's possible that some varieties of free will might be MUCH more averse to retributive justice than might a quasi-determinism. Any sort of theory of free will that sees free will as something evolving would likely favor a theory of justice that aided that evolution, even with cases like criminal behavior. Per my "dehumanizing" notes above, that's that type of free will.

And, as for Caruso's case for free will being an illusion, in essence for committing to some broad variety of determinism, beyond my issue-by-issue, action-by-action partial psychological determinism? Per a good (well, decent) review of his book on the subject, I think I'm far from alone in finding him wanting, even if it's for other grounds, and beyond those, of the review. That said, the reviewer is Jonathan MS Pearce with all that entails. In addition, I disagree with his take on Wegner. Pearce cites Alfred Mele saying he had disproven scientists who claim they have proven free will is an illusion.  I had much more written here, but decided to extract it into a separate post about Mele, who I find wanting.

So, Caruso can claim until the cows come home that retributive justice, and a desire for it, are based on free-will stances on volition. He'll still be wrong.

And, yes, he writes a lot about free will. So, I'm not sure if he thinks attacking retributive justice — his claims aside — is a winning "move" because it will appeal more to liberals, whom secularists are more likely to be, or what.  But, it seems he also has legitimate concerns about retributive justice.

Fine. Write a separate essay about that. And, I would likely love to discuss it with you.

As for engaging with, or not, the idea that belief in free will could be harmful to society?

First, the shorter answer, as I Tweeted Caruso: How would one even begin to try to scientifically prove such a claim? Surveys would offer correlation evidence, of course, and might point to causation. But that's not guaranteed.

Second, you cite what you do note as "a few studies," while noting that they're limited in what they indicated, but not noting whether they wrestle with either of the two issues noted above:
1. Distinguishing US conservatives from those elsewhere and
2. Looking at how belief in free will may affect liberals' thoughts.

Third, a belief in the existence of free will is about as much like the actual existence of free will as belief in Santa or Jesus is the same as actual existence of Jesus or Santa. If Caruso can't differentiate between the two, or ...

If THAT is his premise for claiming a logical connection between free will and theories of justice, that it's actually some connection between a BELIEF in free will and theories of justice, then I don't want to go further down a rabbit hole about making assumptions to clarify his thinking, assumptions which he might reject even though they seem true.

That said, per that principle of charity, I think that's what Caruso is trying to argue. He may have a point.

Let's assume that we can do research, and ignoring liberal/conservative issues to start, we just confirm that, for society in general, in the US and elsewhere, that a belief in free will leads to a belief in the efficacy of retributive justice.

Let us say that criminology studies show retributive justice in general is not efficacious, and generally becomes less efficacious the more harsh it is.

We can then discuss this in terms of ethics, and relatedly, in terms of political philosophy.

Perhaps Caruso will actually wend his way to that in final comments, or maybe will be given an opportunity by Massimo Pigliucci to write a third essay that comports with my charitable interpretation of his first and second ones.

As for the rest of what's actually in his two essays?

I would say, or write an essay on issues in volition, but ...

On my "mu," not just with Caruso but in general, I'm at the point where I think we should just stop talking about free will for, oh, about another century or so.

 

Finally, authors responding to reviews on Goodreads is bad enough and usually a sign of being butt-hurt by a bad review. Reviewing your own book, as Caruso does?  I've never before seen this, and consider it highly un-kosher. Perhaps not as bad in one sense, but worse in another, is that it's just copy-pasting literary reviews.

Seriously.

Cognitive neuroscience in particular, and science of mind in general, isn't going to move from the Early Bronze Age into the Iron Age for at least that long, and it's ridiculous, ultimately, to talk about issues of volition, and theories of them, before then.

Top blogging, second quarter of 2025

 We're actually more than a month into the third quarter, but I still like to do these little roundups and reviews.

With that said, not all pieces were posted in the second quarter of the year; these are just what was most popular (with a bit of shading into July.) 

No. 10? From 2020, "A Lutheran college myth bites the dust." This was from MY now-closed college, the claim that alum Paul Hill wrote "Lean on Me." 

No. 9? From June, sparked by journalism analyst Corey Hutchins on Substack, "Euphemism creep and language issues." 

No. 8 goes way back to 2007, "Contra Buddhism 1," one of my earliest pieces deconstructing Buddhism, and even more, deconstructing Westerners (and perhaps some heimat Buddhists) who claim Buddhism is not a religion. Hold on to that. 

No. 7, from June, a blogger also on Substack tried to claim they had refudiated (sic) Kurt Gödel's logical proof for the existence of god. In reality, they partially failed. (They then, after this post, argued with me about it, and I moved on, sensing the possibility of a Gish Gallop.) 

No. 6 is also from 2007 and related to No. 8. I had the easy "win" of noting that, if enlightenment is ineffable, how can you talk about it? 

No. 5 is one of my top all-time posts, about "The great ahistoricity of Acts." In it, while I talk about all of Acts; I move toward the approximate last one quarter, from Paul's arrest in the Temple after allegedly bringing a goy into the inner court, and on from that, as being even more ahistorical than what comes before it, then note that this certainly means Paul didn't get to Rome.

No. 4? From June, I said "The Big Think" was missing a fourth philosopher in its piece on philosophical issues with grief. 

No. 3 was also from June, about a new round of issues at the r/AcademicBiblical subreddit. This time, it wasn't so much stupid posters or Nazi mods still being Nazis; rather, it was actual academics full of wrongness, namely, John Meier and Dale Allison. 

No. 2? Back in 2012, a geologist claimed he had geological proof Jesus was crucified April 3, 33 CE. And, on it, I picked up a fundagelical commenter who eventually went away. 

No. 1? ALSO from 2007, and one of my top posts ever: "More proof the Buddha was no Buddha." 

(No. 1, No. 5 and No. 10 are in my top 10 posts of all time.) 

Catholic hypocrisy in Fort Worth

 Almost immediately after the death of Pope Francis, Bishop Michael Olson, bishop of the Diocese of Fort Worth, issued an official statement of mourning on the diocese's email mass-blast list.

I don't know if Olson was hoping for the proverbial skinny pope to follow a fat one or what, but whatever, there's nothing on the diocesan website beyond "Habemus Papam."

Elsewhere in his work, Olson has shown himself to be a control-freak jackass. I'm not sure exactly where he falls on "traditionalist-modernizer" gradients, but probably tilts traditionalist. I am in part going off the Padre Pio enshrinement.

Nathan J. Robinson channels his inner Peter Singer — for SHRIMP!

Yes, you read that right.

Nathan J. Robinson, via Andrés Jiménez Zorrilla, channels his inner Peter Singer, as in the Australian utilitarian philosopher known for his sometimes strident, occasionally off-putting, takes on animal rights — for the intelligence, and the suffering potential, of shrimp.  The intelligence of squid and octopus is generally overrated and also largely anecdotal. Therefore, extrapolating from them to shrimp is a fail.

Robinson's an interesting person. A Brit expat who launched A Current Affair here in the US (his home base is New Orleans), he's best seen as a DSA Rosey, even if he's not an official member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

In other words, a squishy pseudo-leftist who will chide Democratic Party leaders every 2 or 4 years, but then, presumably, vote for them in the voting booth. He certainly has never talked up third parties, and for that I've called him out at my primary blog and at Shitter. 

Anyway, per the second link, even if Nicholas Humphrey is not all right, I certainly don't think he's close to being all wet. Warm-bloodedness is where to start with animal intelligence.

Linked inside that piece, but getting separately posted now, is the piece on how octopus intelligence is both overrated and often anecdotally assessed. 

Per Daniel Engber's piece, first, there's been cases of fraud on octopus escape abilities. Second, that doesn't mean conscience-type intelligence anyway, as shown by exactly how they, squid, and presumably other cephalopods control their tentacles.

Beyond that, shrimp aren't cephalopods, which are a class within the phylum of molluscs. They're crustaceans, a subphylum within the phylum of arthropods. And, yes, you'll get people talking up spider intelligence.

They're wrong, too. 

One can still protest what does look like animal cruelty, cutting off one eye of female shrimp to get them to breed better. And? I'd protest cutting out one compound eye of a drone honeybee to get them to pollinate better. Bees aren't intelligent, either, and surely have even less of a sensation of pain than shrimp.  

So, shrimp alfredo? Dine away, unless you're vegetarian, period. Or worried about the environmental issues of farmed shrimp.

Oh, speaking of that? You'll find NOTHING about it in Robinson's article, nor on Zorrilla's website, the Shrimp Welfare Project.

Oops. 

United Methodist Church crack-up gets more serious

I wrote in detail about the basics about 18 months ago. The crackup itself was ultimately not so totally much about theology — ie, gay marriage and clergy — as it was about other issues. One was financial independence, and, related to that, property issues. The other? Methodists require congregation clergy to rotate every three years; conservatives didn't want that. The reasons are largely the same reasons Catholics have similar — to prevent a local clergy power based.

Now? Things have hit a new level of seriousness.

The Texas Supreme Court said recently that the United Methodist Church can officially fight Southern Methodist's plans to set itself apart from the body on governance. SMU is the site of Perkins School of Theology, an official UMC seminary, among other things.

The sayings of Jesus: Pearls before swine

Matthew 6:6:

Doesn't make much sense to me for one BIG reason.

Do not give what is holy to dogs, and do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under foot and turn and maul you.

Jesus is a Jew. One who's there to fulfill the law.

Setting aside the surely allegorical synoptic miracle story of the demon called Legion going into swine (set in the Decapolis and hold on to that)

He theoretically wouldn't have been around swine at all in the first place. 

So, what is he getting at?

Is this an affirmation of a gentiles-only mission? 

(2 Peter does talk about a sow returning to wallowing in the mud, but there's a good chance that book was written in the second century CE, after proto-Christianity and proto-Judaism had started separating.)

Luke doesn't have it, after all.

Missing: A fourth philosopher on grief

Big Think has a pretty good short piece on three philosophers as standard-bearers for approaches to grief.

After an initial hat tip to memento mori, it looks at each of the three: Kierkegaard, Heidegger and Camus. 

It's not bad as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough.

It needs a philosopher of pessimism, say Schopenhauer from the 19th century or Cioran from the 20th. Or maybe, if you strip off the religious veneer, an Unamuno. 

This is an issue where I part with Camus. "The Myth of Sisyphus," and above all its central message that "we must imagine Sisyphus happy," cited in the piece just before linking to the end of "Life of Brian" about looking on the bright side of life, has always struck me as a wrong move.

Let us quote the whole ending, in translation:

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

OK, let's unpack.

I have no "necessity" (as in psychological, not logical) to imagine Sisyphus, or myself in similar circumstances, as happy. That might be a way of mocking god or the gods, but I'm pretty sure Camus is a good secularist, so, to me, not only should it be true that "You don't tug on Superman's cape," but "you don't spit into the wind [of fate]" and then laugh, or smile.

What in detail does that mean, beyond my riff on Croce, though? (Jim, not Benedetto!) 

First, was Camus as a womanizer in part talking about "the thrill of the chase," per an old Deep Purple song? If so, I think he was wrong on that, too, and I think it's a variation or subset of the above.

There's also a false dichotomy. I can see the universe as not sterile, and not futile, but at the same time, per Genesis 1, תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ or tohu wәvohu in English transliteration — formless and void. Rejecting futility doesn't mean embracing happiness. Also, per Camus' words, he could be seen here, or accused here, of riffing on Nietzsche and postulating Sisyphus as beyond good and evil.

Next, what is the "higher fidelity"? Camus doesn't totally get into this.

The big issue is that we must look critically at Camus' framing. I've hinted at this with the Nietzsche comment, but we need to go further.

In the original myth, Sisyphus was an automaton. He was condemned to push this rock.

So, to riff on Camus, "We must first imagine Sisyphus with volition." An automaton can't really have emotion.

Or do we have to imagine that? For Camus, we do, I think, but do we have to for other interpretations? Can Sisyphus still have a consciousness, even if Zeus in some way controls all his motor neurons?

Anyway, I think Big Think gets it wrong. Sisyphus is certainly not fighting grief, or even generalized loss.

And, I think absurdist Camus is the wrong incarnation of Camus to be riffing on Sisyphus.

Rather, even if he can't physically revolt, Sisyphus imagining himself happy is man in revolt.

I was thinking of a long-ago read that I called "the best three-star book I've ever read," and that might still be true.

Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit by Joshua Foa Dienstag
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A so-so to decent book that could have been so much better

Occasionally I'll penalize a book for having a good, even a great, concept and just not doing it full justice, and this is one of those occasions.

This book rates at least five stars for its rehabilitation of pessimism and for its excellence at connecting the dots between different philosophers without an established "school of pessimism."

It ranks less than five stars for not fulfilling its potential and overlooking three major areas.

Dienstag's project of rehabilitation for philosophical pessimism is done well. He begins by stating two core tenets of philosophical pessimism, that it is anti-systemic and anti-optimistic. He also, in his preface, indicates he will most focus on where pessimism plays out in the arena of political philosophy.

From this, he tackles specific philosophers who can be seen as having a pessimistic core, and groups them into cultural, metaphysical and existential pessimists

First, he shows that many philosophers in each of these three categories did not take pessimism to a world-denying, resigned conclusion. Here he contrasts the culturally engaged Leopardi to the withdrawing Rousseau, the metaphysically engaged Freud to the withdrawing Schopenhauer and the existentially engaged Camus to the withdrawn Cioran.

Dienstag then devoted a separate chapter to Nietzsche, followed by a second devoted to the central role of aphorism as a writing style within philosophical pessimism. He finishes with offering up some of his own aphoristic observations, which make several good points.

I found his outline of pessimism to be hugely thought-provoking. I would find myself connecting the dots on one particular line of thought, turn the page, and see him doing similar dot-connecting in print.

...

Now, the book's shortcomings:

The first is early philosophers. It's bad enough that Dienstag just gives a passing glance to the pre-Socratics, especially since he talks about Nietzsche's analysis of them. It's worse by far that he overlooks post-Socratic Cynicism. 

Other than it possibly (though Diogenes himself has little to say on the matter) still having a cyclical, not linear view of history, Cynicism meets all the benchmarks Dienstag establishes to define philosophical pessimism. Skepticism, beyond his brief mention of Pyrrhonic Skepticism, also deserves more mention and coverage.

The second big oversight was not to include 20th century discoveries in the natural science. Quantum theory, if not antioptimistic, at least puts definite limits on human knowledge. So does general relativity. And so, they push back against his claim that scientific positivism is used up.

The third oversight comes directly from philosophy. How Dienstag could not even have a word of mention for Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, which is, at base, a wrecker of systems, totally escapes me.

Dienstag could have added to his three classes of political, metaphysical and existential pessimism a fourth field of logical pessimism. And he could have considered Wittgenstein here in addition to Gödel.

Now, it's true that Dienstag, in his preface, limits his focus to "pessimism (as) a philosophical sensibility from which political practice can be derived." That would rule out Gödel and Wittgenstein, to be sure, but not the Cynics.

Couple of other nitpicking points.

Here and in interviews, Dienstag calls cynicism (lowercase) a negative philosophy. First, cynicism as lowercased is a psychology, not a philosophy. Greek Cynicism is by no means a negative philosophy. For that matter, the same applies to skepticism the attitudinal state vs. Skepticism the philosophical school.

For someone new to the field of philosophy, let alone political philosophy, this book might be five-star worthy. But, to me, Dienstag falls short of that mark. And, the last observations were just about enough to three-star it for me.

I finally did so in the end precisely because this book could have been so much more.

View all my reviews

Or, beyond this book, the Big Think authors (and Camus) needed to read some Edward Arlington Robinson.  

Also, I just read Wikipedia's article about Camus' play "Caligula." Really? Trying to make Caligula himself, even if we discount the worst of the slurs against him, into Sisyphus 2.0? Ye gads.

And, back to the issues at r/AcademicBiblical

 The first is from a mod, not a question-poster or a regular commenter. Well, actually it's from John Meier. I've not read all three volumes of "A Marginal Jew," but I read the first eons ago and I've read enough otherwise about Meier to be kind of dumbfounded that he thinks there actually were 12 disciples. I'm neutral at best on the idea of Israel-symbolism attesting to vs. detracting from, the idea of authenticity. I can see where Meier would think that this is part of Jesus proclaiming himself as the new Israel.

That said, the mod notes that — duh — it's clear that more than 12 followed Jesus. 

So, other than symbolic value by gospelers, why would he believe that Jesus picked out 12?  

==

Why would Paul "invent" the 500 witnesses to the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, per this question? And, why does Dale Allison believe it's real? 

Dale, in reality, that's Corinth 2,000 years ago. Like some Corinthian Jesus-fearer is trekking off to Jerusalem, Judea and Galilee with a checklist asking people within the Jesus-fearer communities there "did you witness the resurrection"?

As for another post from a few years ago, the idea that 1 Corinthians 15:3b-5 was an earlier creedal statement but 6-7 may be Pauline? Per the chapter, verse 3a has Paul's "what I have received." While this does not have the added "from the Lord," the language which he uses to introduce the Eucharist, which many scholars believe he invented, it at least leaves open the possibility he's claiming divine revelation.

Beyond that, since Paul was an irregular visitor to Jerusalem and Caesarea after starting his missionizing, and as far as we know, never went to Galilee, how would he know a certain number of these 500 were still alive anyway?

Add this all up and Allison doesn't have much credibility. It should be added that, per a long-ago piece by me, Allison is at the conservative end of critical scholarship.

==

Side note: I recently left the similar (and also blocking) subreddit r/AskBibleScholars, after seeing the creator saying he was going to migrate it elsewhere or something. (His reasoning made it look self-serving, and besides, even if he moves, he can't kill the subreddit. They live forever, even if it will be a shell.) I also blocked him.

I will take a pass on Alfred Mele

 (At least he's not racialist Frank Miele!)

This is adapted from an updated version of my review of two piecse by Gregg D. Caruso who in them and in other writings, wrestled not only with Benjamin Libet, but also Daniel Wegner and others. Do we have a conscious free will in the classical sense? I think Wegner has, at a minimum, raised some good questions.

 

Wegner's "The Illusion of Conscious Will" is reviewed by me here.

 

Off of it, I am concentrating on Jonathan MS Pearce's review of Caruso and his reliance on the title character, Alfred Mele. 

Back to the logical disjunction. It's possible that some varieties of free will might be MUCH more averse to retributive justice than might a quasi-determinism. Any sort of theory of free will that sees free will as something evolving would likely favor a theory of justice that aided that evolution, even with cases like criminal behavior. Per my "dehumanizing" notes above, that's that type of free will.

And, as for Caruso's case for free will being an illusion, in essence for committing to some broad variety of determinism, beyond my issue-by-issue, action-by-action partial psychological determinism? Per an OK to decent review of his book on the subject, I think I'm far from alone in finding him wanting, even if it's for other grounds, and beyond those, of the review. That said, the reviewer is Jonathan MS Pearce, with all that entails.

 

First, I disagree with his take on Wegner, which seems highly dependent on Mele. Pearce cites Mele, saying he had disproven scientists who claim they have proven free will is an illusion. First, per classical informal logic, can you disprove a negative any more than you can prove it? I doubt it. Second, Wegner himself never claimed he has "proven" any such thing. And indeed, Pearce also notes that Mele accepts the possibility of pre-conscious brain actions that seem to be right up Wegner's street.

 

I should add that the original version of my main piece on Caruso was before my second reading of Wegner. 

 

I will also note that, grokking Goodreads reviews of a couple of books, Mele's "magnum opus" on free will in 2014, per an Italian two-star review, while targeting Libet, of course, and also Milgram and Zimbardo, doesn't even appear to look at Wegner. Also, given Pierce's background, it's interesting that he does NOT pick up on much of Mele's funding coming from the Templeton Foundation. And, at 112 pages, how much argumentation can you do? 

 

And, per his 2013 "Effective Intentions," the editorial blurb has him stating he's deliberately following in Dennett's "Brainstorms" footsteps. UGH! An Amazon five-star review mischaracterizes Wegner. (God, this is epidemic!) They claim that Wegner claims the idea of free will is only imposed after an action. Not.Even.Wrong. Supposedly, Eddy Nahmias, whom I have run into before, pushes this idea even harder with the mash-up word "Willusionists."

 

OK, then in his "Free Will: An Opinionated Guide," one reviewer claims that Mele implies Libet was committing some sort of research and experimentation fraud. I've never heard that claim before, and I find it even more an eye raiser.

 

And, his book on self-deception? The claim that people never consciously do that relies on a pretty rigid divider between conscious, subconscious and unconscious selves, I think. This one-star review at Amazon is hard hitting. (That said, the reviewer seems in places to confuse conscious self-deception with self-deception in general.)

 

As for Pearce? Here he is looking like a Jesus mythicist before pretending to run away from that, but without actually running away. (I just like kicking him again.)

The sayings of Jesus: Do not worry

I had said at the end of Amy-Jill Levine's newest book that I wanted to take a critical look at several sayings of Jesus from  The Sermon on the Mount, and perhaps elsewhere.

My interest is not textual criticism, nor any version of higher criticism. Rather, it's common-sense secularist skepticism. And with that, let's dive into one of his most famous.

From The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 6:25-32, New RSV:

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life? 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

OK, several issues. 

The first verses, 25-28, might be filed under "perennial wisdom," per Aldous Huxley, with verse 29 adding a particular referent from Israelite history.

But, precisely because it could be called perennial wisdom means we have nothing unique to Jesus about the insight.

That said, the saying in the second half of verse 28 is problematic. I'm sure nobody in his circle back then, and nobody outside some early Buddhists or early Jains in India, thought a lily had a "soul" or anything close. Birds have brains, and some level of consciousness, and corvids at least have lots of brains. But, analogizing off flowers makes no sense. Beyond that, lilies also have no hands, beaks, claws or anything else with which they COULD work, even if they had a brain, let alone a "soul."

Verse 30 becomes more problematic yet. Wild grasses, wheat straw, or whatever is either being used for a cooking fire or else burned in the field for clearance? Even in my religious days, wild grasses especially would never have been considered "clothed" by me. Why he didn't talk about sheep on the hillsides of Galilee growing wool, then regrowing it after being sheared, I have NO idea.

Then there's that last verse.

Plenty of gentiles, like the aforementioned Buddhists and Jains, or the likes of the Pythagoreans or Cynics closer to Jesus (including the cities of the Decapolis being home to noted Cynic philosophers at this general time) did not "seek all these things." 

Anyway, to go Jesus Seminar (and I am not sure how they rated the Sermon on the Mount in general, or this part) I'm not that sure Yeshua ben Yusuf said this.

Euphemism creep and language issues

First, "euphemism creep", or the "euphemism treadmill," per Steven Pinker is a real thing. James McWhorter has also written much about it.

It's when a euphemism replaces a no-longer acceptable term, but soon enough becomes no longer acceptable itself.

Think "handicapped" being replaced by "disabled," then that becoming not acceptable and it being replaced by "differently abled." Some day in the not too distant future, because of the word "differently," that will be replaced as well.

This is a field with enough to mine that I am going to write about this on various spots, including my philosophy and critical thinking blog. But, there as here, I'll use the same starting point — Substacker Corey Hutchins talking about how different media outlets in Colorado struggle (or maybe "struggle" with scare quotes intended) on how to talk about "people who aren't supposed to be here," or if I need scare quotes inside that, "people who aren't 'supposed' to be here."

Or, per old friend Brains, who used it non-disparagingly? "Ill Eagles." 

Here, it's not just ground-level, but, in media, an official style issue, as the Associated Press long ago said both "illegal immigrant" and "illegal alien" aren't allows.

I agree for sure with the word "alien." That said, quoting Hutchins, I disagree with the AP already trying to get ahead of euphemism creep three years ago.

“We don’t use the terms illegal immigrant, unauthorized immigrant, irregular migrant, alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented (except when quoting people or documents that use these terms),” the AP wrote. “Many immigrants and migrants have some sort of documents, but not the necessary ones.”

As I said in a comment to Hutchins, why not just add "allegedly" in front of "undocumented immigrants"? 

Per that Shitter link, the AP does offer alternatives. But? Most of them are kind of cumbersome, which undercuts the usefulness of language.

Also, per the authors I cited at the top of the page, this issue tends to get politicized. And, it's usually "conservatives" vs "liberals." Setting aside L/libertarians and some Green types who claim to be neither right nor left, the politicized polarity also ignores friendly skeptical non-liberal leftists.

I want to move beyond that angle, as I've already tackled the politics on my main blog.

In part, we're at Wittgenstein's language as game. For various reasons, including but by no means limited to, politics, and within that, in the US, including but by no means limited to two-party "duopoly" politics, not everybody will be willing to play the same game.

For me, this isn't a killer. But, it is a heads-up, depending on how serious the issue is. 

Within politics, the AP says that if an official statement has "illegal immigrants" and it's being quoted, quote as is — no bowdlerizing.

However, that's print media. Political interviews, or everyday oral communication, political or otherwise, the issue is not so avoidable.

To extend the language as a game angle, language, like Monopoly, can have "house rules" versions. It can also have people cheating, or the linguistic equivalent thereof. Or throwing temper tantrums. 

Let us take the "word" (that's a scare quote, not a reference quote, folks) "trans."

I don't use it, and won't let it be used in written communication with me. It's either a prefix missing a referent noun or adjective, or the first name of an old GM car.

We can talk about "transsexual" or "transgender." And, that's all I'll talk about. Try to use the stemless prefix and I am out of the conversation. 

This, then gets into larger issues scientific as well as cultural and sociological.

But, let's tie it to philosophical issues. Per last week's piece, I reject attempts to claim that existence is an attribute, whether a general attribute or one of specific items, rather than simply a descriptor.

That itself is not a euphemism. But, it's arguable that something like "Ground of Being," especially with English, not German, title-case spelling, is. 

A partially failed refutation of Gödel's logical proof for the existence of god

 I had heard of his proof before, but never actually looked at it.

Atheology, which gets updated occasionally and is also on Substack, actually offered up a refutation.

And, even my first, partial look said that said refutation wasn't perfect.

My comment.

I am certainly not here to support Gödel, but I am also nowhere near a pure empiricist. I don't have time to read everything now, but, I know your refutation of his Point 1 isn't itself on 100 percent pure ground. And your refutation of his Point 5 is on the wrong grounds. (And I hope this isn't part of your ground of attacking ontological arguments, either.) The better answer is that "existence" simply isn't a property.

And, it isn't. Whatever philosophy professors this guy had, their focus was on philosophers and issues from before the second half of the 20th century, if not earlier.

"Existence" is simply a descriptor. The simple fact of "being" (lowercase, no "Ground of Being") is not a property. To use the quasi-dialectic of the refutation, it really can't be a property. Besides, if this guy were as thorough-going a neo-empiricist as he claims to be, he'd accept that, from his Weltanschauung, there is no such thing as "properties" in general. 

He responded to me on Substack with more verbiage than in the original. On the first point, he said science is empirical not rational. Yes, but, Gödel, like his many forbearers, is offering a logical proof, not a scientific hypothesis. 

On the second? He says he could have cited Kant's famous phrase that existence is not a predicate. But, this is itself a fail. I wasn't referring to Kant, just as I don't refer to Kant in tackling Anselm's and other ontological arguments. Rather, I am riffing on existentialism. Existence simply "is." Hence it's not a property, and I make no reference to Kantian non-predicates.

But, I'm not going to respond to him, lest I get something even more long-winded back. See below.

A later, fuller reading?

Well, I first saw this piece about what Mr. Lyman calls "epirealism" and yes, we're in the land of pretty hardcore empiricism, updated for modern times. And, it's probably not worth arguing with his deconstruction of Gödel. And, as for who he is? By name, I've never come across him before.

Composition of Revelation and "A Bible Darkly"

 The site "A Bible Darkly" is a fairly recent addition to the blogroll here.

 It's got some decent stuff, per the first half of the header.

It's also got one huge problem.

No comment section AND no social media links, so I can't comment to the author on things like the first half of the post.

He says, at this link, that he originally supported a dual-author theory of Revelation. It's different than mine on some details, but the big picture is largely the same. A non-Jesus follower Jewish apocalypticist wrote the "non-Christian" sections, followed by a later, Christian author.

He now says that, per David Aune, he rejects dual authorship.

I think his grounds for the rejection aren't good. It doesn't allow for the Christian author to have done editing on the earlier sections, and also assumes that the rough, weird language is uniformly so throughout. 

I mean, per his own old idea, Chapter 14 has "Jesus" by name.

My theory is based on the old Anchor Bible commentary by J. Massingbyrde Ford, augmented by thoughts by James Tabor. Seeing "Jesus" in chapter 14 only augments my own thoughts here.

This all has the beast fit well as Nero, with composition of the pre-Christian core during the Jewish revolt, in all likelihood. 

And, per Aune's theory, one author doing 25 years or more of redaction (he also believes in a late 60s core, but final work in Domitian's time) seems unlikely. The explanation for different editorial foci, that the author was originally not a Jesus follower but later converted, is not highly likely.

Interestingly, Aune taught at Notre Dame, after earlier stints elsewhere. I don't know if Tabor was still there or not when he started.

Jesus may or may not be for everyone, but Amy-Jill Levine is definitely not for me

As is my wont, this is an expanded version of a Goodreads review.

Jesus for Everyone: Why He Should Matter More to Everyone by Amy-Jill Levine
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I had heard things about Amy-Jill Levine before. Some of what I’d read, on certain subreddits, Academia and elsewhere, indicated that she brought a lot of new insight to Jesus and his parables and teaching by looking through Jewish eyes.

And, some other insights indicated that this might be at least in part good marketing.

But, I’d not latched on to one of her books before.

And now?

“Jesus for Everyone” makes me think it is indeed — at least in part — good marketing.

First is her spending multiple pages beating down “Jews 101” stereotypes. Most people who really have all those stereotypes probably aren’t reading this book in the first place. (On the other hand, that she had to call out a piece in Sojourners, and talks about relatively critical Catholic and Protestant theologians, says maybe this is an issue.)

Second, she does blow her own horn.

Then, near the end of the opening chapter, which overviews the subject ahead, the “Family values, celibacy, marriages and divorce, adultery” subsection says “He is single and celibate.”

Is he? A fair chunk of serious NT scholars of recent years have at least partially pushed back against that. At a minimum, unlike Paul, who references Peter’s wife and thus indicates he has one, this is an argument from silence.

Wooden translations are literalistic, not literal, and as bad as Jesus Seminar’s translations of sayings of Jesus. Or, for another comparison? It’s like reading the English line of Bible Hub’s interlinear. In fact, maybe that’s what it IS, or similar.

It also comes off as pedantic, and per the title of the book, I think would lose a fair share of her target audience.

OK, I have several disagreements, theological, exegetical and sociological, with material in all the individual chapters. I have unhidden the spoiler on the original review, which started with the "Economics chapter" and went up to the "Finally, let's look at the title," and expanded the material that was hidden, as well.

Second, her insertion of queer sexuality into the Legion pericope? Laughable.

Economics chapter. Did the steward know the debtors’ debt? I’ve always thought that “show me your books” was followed by the rich man taking them.

Slavery chapter:

First, just as Candida Moss did in “God’s Ghostwriters,” she overstates the prevalence of slavery in Rome, especially outside Italy. 

She is wrong, as is Moss, on one-third or more of Rome being enslaved; in the provinces, it was no more than 15 percent. Even in Italy itself, they were no more than 30 percent the population. See Wiki, also linked in my Moss review. You’ll see occasional estimates higher to much higher, but I don’t think they’re credible. In short, contra Levine (and Candida Moss) it wasn’t that 10 percent of the Empire owned the other 90 percent or even close. 

At this point, I turned to the back and realized — no index! This itself can get a ding of up to 1 star. Also missing? No bibliography. I couldn’t find if she cited Moss. Or later, Yonathan Adler. Finally, a lesser ding than the other two? No end-of-book list of biblical passages or pericopes cited, referenced or discussed. Total ding is, say, 1.25 stars right there, meaning we’re guaranteed not more than 3 stars. It also means that when, I’m going web searches later, I can’t find the pages for what she said about an alternative etymology for “Pharisee.”

Next, she does not talk about Israelite enslavement of non-Israelites.

Centurion’s slave misses point. The story itself is about the centurion’s trust, and healing at a distance rather than in person, since such stories of magic usually relied on physical contact. It's not about whether this person is a slave or not.

Name of high priest’s slave Malchus could also come from Hebrew for “messenger.” It's not necessarily from "king." It's also irrelevant.

What’s really at issue with both Levine and partially with Moss is that they, by saying “Look, slaves” don’t do enough to distinguish Roman slavery from modern Western versions, as in, the number and type of roles slaves held. (Moss is somewhat better, on the idea that slaves were literate in terms of both reading and writing.) This came out in the parable of the vineyard. And, Ms. Levine, probably anybody this side of Peter Singer would be more concerned about the death of their son than that of slaves.

She could do better, going beyond these actual passages, to counter White-privileged modern White evangelical Christians who embrace the idea of being God’s slave with no idea of what slavery actually entails. (Incorrect interpretations of the Parable of the Talents confirm what most these people think.) That said, noting clearly that the master, per the parable, is a conniver, Levine does NOT use that to fully overthrow most Christian analogies. And, other than talking about misinterpretations, she doesn't really offer up a correct interpretation, or what she thinks is one. (I'd grokked sections of her "Short Stories by Jesus" as extracted for magazine or other reading years ago, so the problem I mention isn't new and I know that.)

Ethnicity et al:

Claim that Jews didn’t evangelize are overblown. We know that 150 years earlier, Hasmoneans evangelized at the point of a sword. And, elsewhere, like in Muslim-Christian borderlands in places like Spain centuries later, at a minimum, Jews didn’t dissuade converts. Plus, the “four abstentions” in Acts would indicate that there was some Jewish evangelism. And, Paul was a Pharaisee, was he not? Levine later “softens” by admitting that a “hey neighbor,” at least, led godfearers to synagogues.

Injecting queer sexuality into the Legion pericope? Laughable. I mean, at a point like this, we're giving anti-"woke" folks free bullets.

She does get credit for noting that Gerasa, in Mark, is likely the correct town, contra Matthew, and that Mark may have been punning. If so, maybe Moss isn't totally wrong on claiming Mark was deliberately writing "social confusion" in his mixed-up geography a chapter or two later. I am still not ready to go too far down that road.

That also said, credit where credit is due elsewhere. The section about John 4, Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well at Sychar, was well handled in general.

Health care chapter:

Didn’t do much for me in general. Even more than some previous chapters, much of it was about “what most Christians, including many academics, get wrong about Jews.”

On the Jairus pericope, the note that “archisynagogos” can also appear in feminine declension is irrelevant to the story at hand. (And, for anti-"woke" people who notice that? More free bullets." Page 2 of her Goodreads writings will indicate that, with anything she stuffs under the umbrella of feminism, this is par for her course.

On Mark 1? Any good modern non-fundagelical commentary will tell you that the "healing" of the "leper" is about ritual purity, not moral. And, with that said, while not a challenge to "all Judaism," it IS best seen as a challenge to the temple cultus.

Family matters chapter:

Contra the first page of the chapter, there is no such thing as “gender reassignment surgery” as sex is not gender. With me expecting that to set the tone for the chapter as a whole, we’re pretty much guaranteed two-star territory. Tis true that ancient Hebrew, in part borrowing from Greek and Hebrew, had words for people who were intersex or similar, as well as people with fluid gender representation. But, gender wasn't sex back then, and on sex, we know some of the issues of human reproduction and sexual development which they didn't know back then.

Second: How do we know that Jesus was only metaphorically in favor of eunuchs, rather than Origin, at least allegedly, thinking he was literally in favor? Two paragraphs later, Levine herself talks about Jesus talking about it in the literal sense, in fact. Then later, it's back to metaphorical angles.

On Antipas executing John the Baptizer, is it really more plausible to follow Josephus and think this was a pre-emptive strike against John’s movement, rather than thinking John had angered him? This also presumes that John, even more than Jesus, at a minimum was perceived as a Zealot-like figure and maybe actually was one.

Also, interestingly, on modern Judaism and a husband’s refusal to grant the bill of divorce so as to block a Jewish-ceremony remarriage (Is this for Orthodox only, or all Jews? Levine doesn’t say) she overlooks the partial parallel of Catholic annulment.

Biblical criticism in this chapter? On most theories of development of the Torah, and not limited to a full documentary hypothesis, Deuteronomy was written before Leviticus and therefore, contra Levine, cannot “update” it. And by this point, I am "wondering" about her as a biblical critic in general.

Politics chapter:

On Romans 13, though it’s fun to argue it’s universal and absolutist to "submit to governing authorities," it probably isn’t. That said, it’s highly doubtful that it’s referring to synagogue rulers. Rather, I think the interpretation that it’s time and location specific, and referring to Jews in Rome recently returned from Claudius’ expulsion, has much to commend it. (I saw that on Wiki's page for Romans 13, which should again shut up people who unduly diss Wiki.)

Finally, let’s look at the title: “Jesus for Everyone.”

To do that, we have to ask “Who was Jesus,” and set aside the fundagelicals, C.S. Lewis, etc.

We have:
1. Apocalyptic prophet
2. Jewish faith healer
3. Zealot-type revolutionary
4. Jewish Cynic.

On No. 4? I’m not aware of any A-list scholar besides Burton Mack who still plumps for that. Crossan moved away again. Don’t know of any top-level younger scholars who have picked that up. That said, it’s very much detached from No. 3. Maybe not so much from 1 or 2.

Of 1-3, they’re not mutually exclusive. To pick up on “bios” type theories of Jesus, Apollonius was arguably both 1 and 2, to some degree, in the pagan world. To some degree.

But, Jesus could have been following on John the Baptizer’s lead (little mentioned here) proclaiming the immanent kingdom, while the healings were part of the “exousia” with which he taught.

That said, 1 and 3, or 2 and 3, or all three, aren’t mutually exclusive. Maybe Jesus eventually felt called to, if you will, personally immanentize the eschaton? Zealot-type or zealot-like, perhaps not an open revolutionary against either Rome on the one hand or the Temple cultus on the other, but partially? As I’ve pondered before, behind Luke’s increasing hand-waving late in Acts, maybe Paul actually did bring a goy in the temple and for similar reasons, as I have discussed, also linked in the Moss review.

Anyway, does an actual secularist NEED Jesus for them, as I infer the title implies, and as the subtitle “Why He Should Matter More to Everyone” goes beyond implying? Not so much, contra Levine’s attempts to try to make him speak about health, mental health and other things.

And with that, the title, and the presumptuousness, guarantees two stars. It gets the "meh" tag, but not the "disappointing," because I wasn't expecting as much as with Moss. But, in broad ways, they have some similarities, and I'll pass on reading Levine again, just like Moss. 

On her horn-blowing? Big deal that she's written a semi-critical commentary on Luke with an evangelical like Ben Witherington. This fits an evangelical "Jewish ingathering" perspective.

And to deliberately riff on something at the time of the Jesus movement? Riffing on "godfearer" goys who hung around synagogues, I think Levine is a "Jesus-fearer" Jew.

Finally, I've been inspired to look at Jesus the purveyor of wisdom sayings. I'll take a crack at some of his more famous words from the Sermon on the Mount in weeks and months ahead.

View all my reviews

Was Jesus really a "zealot"?

I'm using the term anachronistically to refer to the idea of Jesus as revolutionary.

First, the three main ideas of who Jesus might have been, setting aside the fundagelicals and C.S. Lewis' triple-L blather,  of course are:

1. "Apocalyptic" prophet. (That's in scare quotes because the "irruption of the kingdom of god" within Judaism of the turn of the eras did not have to be apocalyptic in the narrow sense.
2. Jewish faith healer, per Geza Vermes, which may have shaded into general-purpose miracle worker like Honi the Circle Drawer.
3. Jesus the revolutionary.

(Jesus as Jewish Cynic has been abandoned by most mainstream scholars not named Burton Mack.)

Theoretically, as in the sense not only of philosophical necessity, but more broadly, none of the three are mutually exclusive. That said, faith healer probably squares more with a non-apocalyptic, narrow sense, prophet. Revolutionary would seem to square more with a more apocalyptic prophet, and it and faith healer wouldn't seem to have much Venn diagram overlap.

In reality, though, Jesus the Zealot is traditionally understood as having a primarily this-world political focus. 

Was Jesus such a figure?

Yes, Simon the Zealot was a disciple, and yes, Luke "hid" him by using the Aramaic. Yes, Jesus talks about violence. Yes, there are swords at Gethsemane. Yes, yes, and yes.

But, methinks Fernando Bermejo-Rubio doth protest too much. Start at page 9, as the pages are numbered, for a numbered list of bullet-point type arguments. I'll refute just a few.

1. Crucified? Sure. Non-Roman citizen in a world where capital punishment was the sentence for all sorts of crimes, and alleged ones, in a world lacking modern ideas of legal due process.

2. Between robbers? Peshering on the Tanakh is a better explanation than that he was a revolutionary. That Jesus was himself a highwayman, a robber, would also be a better explanation than that he's an insurrectionist. ("Insurrectionist" is not the best translation for λῃστής; it does involve force, not just theft by stealth. That's true in English, too, where a robber is not an insurrectionist. Contra special pleading in a footnote, per Strong's, the noun comes from the verb ληΐζομα which means "to plunder."

3. If Jesus did consider himself "King of the Jews," he elsewhere reportedly says his kingdom is not of this world. (That said, this could be words on his mouth. That that said, Peter's "You are the Messiah" could just be Matthew's words on Peter's mouth. And now, we're into historical Jesus issues.)

5-8. The Gethsemane scene? If Jesus were really trying to overthrow Pilate, would he not have had many more armed followers? 

12. John 11:47-50? Totally ahistorical.

14. Referencing the phrase of the Lord's Prayer that "Your will be done on earth as in heaven" as having political implications is laughable.

24. The interpretation of "render unto Caesar" as being that Jesus was implying "render nothing" both misses the context of the pericope and is laughable. (This is even as I deal with someone on Reddit on this very issue.)

29. Referencing Luke talking about the census in Luke 2 ignores all the historical wrongness about that passage, from the misdating of the actual census in Judea to the fact that it didn't apply to Galilee.

So, IF Jesus was a Zealot, arguments like this don't advance the claim.

Not much of a handle on Handel

I've not had much musical conversation on here in a while, and an expanded version of a recent book review is a good way to fix that.

Every Valley: The Desperate Lives and Troubled Times That Made Handel's Messiah by Charles King
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I said this book was 2.5 stars rounded down, rounded down in part because this book shouldn't be at 4 stars. We're going to focus more than I did at Goodreads on musical-related issues as well as my thoughts on Handel.

Tis true that the subhed makes at least halfway clear that this is not just a "biography" of the Messiah, and it's certainly not a bio of Handel. That said, it's too much a pastiche even within latitudinarian allowances.

First, a side note, that ties to that. I usually look at blurbers on the back of a book. Not one of them for "Every Valley" is a musicologist, music historian, or music director of an orchestra. I'm familiar with four of the five actual blurbers, having read one or more of their works; none has written about music. So, I wasn't holding tremendous expectations. Stacy Schiff did write about a similar historical period with her Samuel Adams bio. Henry Louis Gates is not much further away. Simon Sebag Montefiore is yet further away historically. And, Elaine Pagels? Really? Amanda Foreman, biographer of the Dutchess of Devonshire, makes absolute sense on the historical angle, but of the other four, one makes less than zero sense, and none of the other three are really good for more than 50 cents on the dollar, if that.

Second, the pastiche? Did we need to know as much about Charles Jennens, writer of "the book" for Messiah, as actually presented? Probably not. Certainly, his non-juror stance was not relevant. Given that the '45 and the Young Pretender did not influence Handel, their semi-extensive discussion was not at all relevant. Ditto on not needing to know as much as was presented about Thomas Coram. A few Black Ghanian leaders inadvertently enslaved then freed was nice, but also irrelevant. In addition, one of them was or became a slave trader himself. Yes, at least some of Handel's salary from the Crown was at least indirectly related to the slave trade. And? Paul says there is "neither slave nor free," ergo theoretically giving Christians license to ignore slave trading. Most the Holdsworth material, irrelevant.

Third? There were a couple of historical errors early on. The Holy Roman Empire had eight not nine electors at this time. Queen Anne succeeded Queen Mary, not King William, who had predeceased her by a few years. Later on, descriptions of a couple of continental wars were a bit sketchy, and also not really relevant.

Whack what you could, and you'd be down to 150 pages; not much of a book.

Flip side? And, this is where the rubber hits the road for the expanded review.

First, Handel's childhood is thin here. We read little other than his allegedly sneaking him home harpsichord practice, about his childhood musical training.

Second, what about early adulthood? Actual interactions with musicians in Italy, name-dropped by King about Handel's time there? All we get is the name-dropping, nothing more. Not discussed, nor is whether or not he met Vivaldi. Did he interact with English composers of the era? Not told.

Third? What about Messiah? From the intro, it's clear that this is an authorial love letter as much as a history. As a former Lutheran now a secularist, but one who has more than a dozen Requiems? Messiah IS kind of bombastic, more, and to its detriment, than the author portrays. It's OK music. It's rousing music. But, great music, it generally is not. Compare it to Bach's B minor Mass or St. John's Passion.

King will talk about Handel's weird meter, and blames it all on allegedly still having a relatively poor understanding of English. (He writes alleged quotes from Handel in a mock German-influenced bad accent that comes off as stupid — stupid by King, not Handel.)

The reality is that Handel had been in England more than 30 years by the time he wrote Messiah. His accented English was likely no worse than that of Arnold Schwarzenegger. If that.

Rather, per King mentioning how much Handel recycled old music, it appears that forcing of meter and accent to old tunes was as much if not more a problem.

So, why didn't he steal from others? Bach regularly did so from Vivaldi, for example. Stravinsky is known for saying many of the best of his ideas he stole from others. Or, if he was stealing from himself, why didn't he edit himself better?

But no. Instead, Handel gives us something forced, padded and bombastic. From this era, I'll take Bach's B minor Mass or St. Matthew's Passion as greater religious music.

And, as a secularist of originally Lutheran background, I'm in a place of detached observance.

And so, to the bigger picture yet. Yes, this is a love letter by King. But, is Messiah in particular, or Handel in general, worth it? Not in my book.

Years ago, I divided classical musicians into groups of seven. I thought of that after finishing this book, and thought groups of five would be better.

Top five: Bach, Vivaldi, Beethoven, Stravinsky, Shostakovich.

Second five: Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Brahms, Schubert, maybe Mozart if you force me.

Third five: Schittke (whom I might shove past Mozart), Hindemith, Prokofiev, maybe Verdi, maybe Penderecki.

Fourth five: Not sure who all would be here, but there's a low likelihood of Handel being here even. Water Music? Good. Fireworks? Almost as good, but also tending toward the bombastic. And, that's a word you can use for a lot of other works of his. 

Beyond that is one other issue. While neither Jennens nor Handel created Anglo-Israelism, both, definitely as a team, contributed to its rise. While it became big in Victorian Britain, its first mentions are in the 1600s. And bombast such as "Zadok the Priest" (text pre-Jennens) becoming a coronation hymn added to that.

This ex-Lutheran hasn't sat through the Messiah either in person or at a PBS type TV broadcast for maybe a full 20 years now, and I don't expect that to change.

View all my reviews

Alan Kirk vs David Litwa on searching for the historic Jesus

 I have vague familiarity with Litwa, and per a not bad question about him and actually good response on this post at r/AcademicBiblical, I have some thoughts on Alan Kirk's review of Litwa's "How the Gospels Became History."

I do NOT think Kirk has the better of Litwa, but that's not the only thing involved.

First, my familiarity with Litwa is not so much directly with him, but with the "bios" school of New Testament, and specifically, gospels, exegesis. As No-Moremon notes in his response, this includes Robyn Faith Walsh and others.

First, contra Kirk, the "bios" idea can be used as a scaffolding around which to construct social memory ideas. That, of course, from my point of view, though, means the scaffolding came first.

Second, on the idea that this discounts conflict between Judaism and Hellenism? While Kirk may be right that at times, Litwa strains on finding specific Hellenistic parallels rather than mining the Hebrew Bible, Kirk in turn oversells this. Mark portrays a Jesus in conflict with "Herodians" and "Pharisees" and "Sadducees," but not, contra Matthew's Passion-crowd bloodlust, let alone John's "The Jews," is Jesus shown in conflict with the Jews in general.

So this? 

“Hellenistic,” however, describes not so much a cultural homogenization as the fraught cultural encounter of rich national traditions with Greek culture, on a spectrum of assimilation, adaptation, and resistance.

Not so totally so, especially if Kirk thinks Litwa is describing homogenization.

Besides, per Lee Levine's great "Judaism and Hellenism in Antiquity: Conflict or Confluence?", the idea that Judaism wouldn't incorporate Hellenistic mythos is simply not true. 

Beyond that, as early as Justin Martyr, Christian leaders acknowledged that the tales about Jesus' virgin birth were like those in the Greek world — only true. Otherwise, Adam Gopnik notes that Elaine Pagels' new book compares early Christians' evolving views about Jesus' post-death to Lubavichers' about Rebbe Menachem Schneerson. Gopnik notes that believe in a Lubavicher Moshiach redivivus would have surged had anything like the Jewish Revolt hit the Lubavicher community. 

But? This is NOT a nod toward Litwa's "bios." Rather, it's Pagels' way of explaining how "rips" in the fabric of memory were restitched. Indeed, from there, Gopnik first pivots to Richard C. Miller, with whom I am unfamiliar, and then Walsh.

And so, why wouldn't the Gospelers use, and adapt, specific bits of Greek legend and myth? There, Pagels at least gets the overhead right. As for any Eastern myth Litwa might say backs the gospels, well, Levine notes that Judaism had been extensively Persianized before this. Emphasis on extensively, in my eyes. Idan Dershowitz, per what he says was originally The Great Famine, not Flood, has tackled this issue in detail.

Third, that said, is Litwa really that new? To riff on D.F. Straus, mentioned by Kirk, is this really that much different than a repackaged θεῖος ἀνήρ theory with a broader background?

And, per personages like Metatron in some of the Jewish apocalyptic literature from Qumran, that idea was not totally alien to Judaism before the gospels, either. Nor, however its theological interpretation is skinned, was the מַלְאַךְ יְהוָה or "angel of the Lord." And, Kirk knows this as well. 

The search for the historical Jesus

Fourth, but not spoken in detail, I think is Kirk's real plaint. And that's that, as noted, Litwa is shutting the door on new searches for the historical Jesus.

And, really, it should be shut.

On the gospels, stand or die on Markan priority or not, whether you're pushing the communal social memory idea of the gospels' writing or not. As I see it, this is in some ways, with the Synoptics, an attempt to work around, or dodge, traditional theories of transmission, as was the push for oral transmission in the 1970s-90s, riffing off the Balkan bards of Parry and Lord. And, in part because social memory can be just as malleable as individual memory, I see it as being not much more likely than oral transmission theory to say anything significantly new about composition of any of the canonical gospels, let along the Synoptics. Oh, and yes, social memory can be that malleable; it starts with the sociology of crowds.

Perhaps Litwa could use more of the traditional 20th-century exegetical forms and methods. Perhaps use new ones, like the social memory idea, without over-leaning on it.

But, accept that you'll never get back further than an author's, or an author and his community's, ideas about the historic Jesus.

Period.

That's for you, and others of like mind, Alan Kirk.

To riff on Bultmann? The Christ of faith is all you can find.