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.

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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.

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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.

Robyn Faith Walsh: "I'm part of the Bart Ehrman team"

Via The Amateur Exegete, newly added to the blogroll here based on something I saw at the Nazi-mods biblical subreddit, I saw the following video from Walsh about dating the gospels:

And yes, she makes that statement in quotes in the header at the start of the video. 

First, ugh on multiple accounts.

Regular readers here know I have less and less regard for Ehrman each new book he writes, so that's one ugh.

Second, if you're an academic with a solid background yourself, why would you place yourself on some other academic's "team"?

Third and biggest ugh? 

Is Bart Ehrman now a "brand"? Just shoot me. 

Per her comments, where she begins with what she claims is the current consensus in the scholarship.

First, with Mark, she doesn't allow for a "Cross Gospel" or other written material.

On Matthew, is it really a "consensus" that he wrote at 80 CE? Not from what I've read.

Luke at 90? Again not what I've heard.

John? Early second. And, sorry, the "scraps of papyrus" aren't guaranteed to be from the current John. Could be from an earlier edition, the Egerton Gospel, or something else.

Then, her dating.

First, she claims Mark is post-Jewish War entirely. Her "no-temple Judaism" claim doesn't float me, and it ignores the truncated version of the "apocalypse" in Mark vs other synoptics. 

But, in her snippet, she offers nothing more detailed on her dating vs "the consensus" on the other two synoptics or John.

==

Back to that Bart Ehrman brand. Yes, she stans for his Biblical Studies Academy. Flaks for it at the end of the video. Has Bart's mugshot icon in the top left of the video.

Barf me.

Top blogging, first quarter of 2025

 A couple of weeks late, but better late than never, eh?

As is normal, and as with the monthly roundup on my main blog, these were the most read in the first three months of this year, without necessarily being written then. "Evergreen" items from the past will be so noted.

10th? My 2022 post on the great ahistoricity of Acts — and radical thoughts on Paul's demise — is trending in part because I posted it as a comment at Paul Davidson's "Is That in the Bible" site, and also because it's linked in No. 7 below.

In 9th? A recent post about putting Hindu-Buddhist theological carts before consciousness horses.

At 8 is an oldie from 2021 about the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod shutting down its Concordia University in Portland because it was too doctrinally loose on some issues, and the shitload of fallout that caused — fallout that, AFAIK, has not been totally resolved. Teh Google shows no recent news, but does show LCMS insidiousness at work earlier this year on its university in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

At No. 7, from earlier this year, is my "semi-disappointing foul ball" critique of "God's Ghostwriters" by Candida Moss.

At No. 6, from just a month ago? A hard-hitting callout of LCMS president Matthew Harrison for godawful theology in sucking up to Trumpistan. Some of it is bad theology by Lutheran vs Reformed Protestantism lights, others is just bad theology period. I suspect it's only going to get worse over the next three years and nine months.

No. 5? From a year ago, my critique of new and weird claims about Morton Smith and Secret Mark. It may be trending because I posted it on Skeptophilia blogger Gordon Bonnet's page when he wrote a post about a month ago talking about "Mysterious Mark" or something and I thought fragments of a previously unknown gospel had been found until I started reading.

No. 4? From last month, the latest installation of the gift that keeps on giving, the latest wrongness at the r/AcademicBiblical subreddit.

No. 3? A claim that a so-called (and yes, that part is needed) Plague of Cyprian nearly collapsed the Roman Empire, the subject of an entire recent book, "The Fate of Rome," is pretty much wrong in many ways, and may be close to the old physics Not.Even.Wrong. world.

No. 2? My second takedown of "Matty" Harrison, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod president, came after the Portland issue, in 2023. This was over his handling of the "Lutefash" issue within his denomination, including pastors, including, in an update, one involved with the "Steal the Vote" effort in Georgia 2020. As with No. 6, I expect this will only get worse over the next three years and nine months because Matthew Harrison is a big "trimmer" as well as a big politician. (If you think organized religion — and not just tribes within Christianity on that — isn't politicized, you need to think again.)

No. 1? I love not only kicking touters of Buddhism, like Robert Wright and his ilk that claims it's not a religion, but kicking ideas in Buddhism behind that.  "More proof that the Buddha was no Buddha" goes back to 2007.

And, with 2, 6, and 8, I decided Harrison needed his own tag.

There's more to agnostics than meets the eye?

 Well, maybe, or maybe not, if the eye observing the agnostic is critically perceptive enough.

PsyPost confirms what I think many of us have already known.

Using "atheist" in its modern Western sense of "irreligious" (after all, tens if not hundreds of millions of Theravada Buddhists are quite religious and quite atheistic), it says that agnostics have a different psychological mindset than either atheists or the religious. 

Research findings indicate agnostics possess a distinct psychological profile characterized by higher indecisiveness, greater neuroticism, and a stronger tendency to search for alternatives in life compared to both atheists and religious believers. ... Agnostics exhibited a greater tendency to search for life alternatives, suggesting they maintain a broader orientation toward keeping options open rather than simply being uncertain atheists.

The study, from the UK, has enough participants to be reasonably solid versus small sample size issues.

The study also notes this:

Strong agnostic identifiers rated both themselves and others positively on traits associated with being a “nice person” without exhibiting the “better-than-average effect” seen in the other groups. This pattern may reflect a form of humility or reluctance to assert superiority consistent with the agnostic worldview.

Which in turn reflects on part of why people like me scorn Gnu Atheists, seeing them as the Western atheism version of the religiously fundagelical.

Speaking of?

How much can these findings about agnostics be extended to non-Gnu Atheists, especially the type of people listed in religious   atheistic (in the western sense, of course, excluding Theravada) spectra in old books, i.e., people who were once called "soft atheists"? That's probably a bit firmer than "uncertain atheists" but might still have people who have the humility issues locked in more than at least the Gnu, or fundamentalist, atheists. That said, the study doesn't talk about how the religiously fundamentalist compare to the religiously latitudinarian. Nor does it talk about how monotheisms compare to Eastern religions.

Ethical and pontifical thoughts on the death of Pope Francis

Francis, who died Monday morning at age 88, was certainly a reformer pope when contrasted with his successor, Benedict XVI. But, how much? Per the Associated Press's obituary, he really wasn't much of a reformer on the Catholic Church's sexual abuse scandal. He had a mix of defiance and diffidence for at least the first five years of his pontificate, and I'm not sure he ever really "got it."

On the broader picture, the way he distanced himself from liberation theology in his pre-bishopric days as Argentinian leader of the Jesuits, long before coming a cardinal, also means that "reformer" should be placed in context.

He was a critic of capitalism, yes. But, so too was not only Benedict but John Paul II; Benedict may not have been that vocal, but JPII was at times. Conservative Protestant fundagelicals in the US don't get how much this issue is woven into Catholic teaching. (For that matter, neither do conservative Catholic laity, or maybe the truth is more that they refuse to accept it rather than that they don't get it.) 

As for his legacy? I don't think he really stanched the decline in attendance in Catholicism in the western world, either among more liberal or more conservative attendees. As for the ethical legacy? The sexual abuse scandal still has a degree of haze over the church. Women priests and abortion, though they will be no-go lines for any pope, are alienation for some of the laity.

And, while serving longer than Benedict, it's still an issue how much he reformed the curia and the College of Cardinals. His successor will be no more reforming than him even outside the bright lines on the priesthood and abortion.  Don't forget that evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala, who called god "the great abortionist," identifies as Catholic.

The real issue isn't Benedict. 

There are two others.

One, per "Saint Acutis," whose canonization Francis now will not see, is that Francis doubled down on John Paul II's acceleration of the sainthood process, and, with people like Acutis — and Antoni Gaudi, who is in the pipeline, tried to modernize the church by looking for "saints of the gaps." Unless a future pope canonizes Francisco Ayala (joking), or more seriously, someone like the Belgian astrophysicist and diocesan priest Georges Lemaitre, the attempts of the church to straddle two stools on scientific issues will probably see those stools widening ever further.

The other is that, despite John XXIII's pronouncements absolving "the Jews" for the death of Jesus, the whiff of past papal antisemitism stands unaddressed.

"Cultural Catholicist" Tim O'Neill, who identifies as an atheist, but acts as a papal apologist on issues like this, refuses to read the likes of David Kertzer.

The reality is that Pius XI served 17 years, from 1922-39, and cozied up to Mussolini then Hitler. Pius XII served even longer, 1939-58, continued to cozy up to fascists, did minimal work in trying to save Jews, and helped with the "rat line" to let Nazis escape to Latin America after WWII.

Kerzer has written full books not only about Pius XI and Pius XII, but about papal antisemitism. Per the first, Pius XI looked ready to backtrack at least a bit, near his deathbed, but the future Pius XII, as his Vatican Secretary of State, destroyed that statement. In the second book, Kertzer actually calls Pius XII a fascist. In the third, from 1800 through at least 1945, Kertzer notes that Catholic antisemitism emanated, in many cases, from the Vatican itself.

Will a future pope fully and honestly address this? John XXIII's absolution for "good Friday" didn't go beyond that in specific. So, I doubt it. 

On Francis? Many Zionists claim that he's led the Vatican backward from predecessor popes. Other Catholics, and the likes of Mondoweiss, say rather that it's overdue outreach to the Palestinian world. (Don't forget that Palestine still has Christians — even while taking note of Paula Fredriksen's warped take on why the Christian-Muslim ratio has declined, and that Palestinian Christianity is a mishmash of Catholicism, Lutheranism, Eastern Rite Catholic and Orthodox.)

As for jokes making the rounds of Shitter Monday that Bagger Vance was the antichrist for killing Francis?

That said, the conservative Lutheranism of my childhood — which still refuses to address the antisemitism of founder Martin Luther — thinks the office of the papacy, beyond any individual pope, is the biblical antichrist. John Calvin proclaimed the same.

That's good old Leo X in the middle if you can't tell.

Actually, it wasn't just Luther and Calvin and it didn't start there. Arnulf of Reims first made this claim in in the late 900s CE.

So, with Francis' death, per acclamations of new medieval kings? "Antichrist is dead; long live antichrist!"

Jokes aside, in reality, this is incorrect. I wrote in depth, long ago, about how "antichrist" is NOT "the beast" of the mark of such and number 666 in Revelation, and now also, neither of these is "the man of lawlessness" in 2 Thessalonians. 

That said, if used generically, and really meaning "the man of lawlessness"? Luther and Calvin weren't all wet. More correct yet since another Pius, Pius X, proclaimed papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council. And, Pius IX was pontiff at the time of the Edgardo Mortara kidnapping. What is it with these Piuses?

As a secularist, it’s of one sense no mind to me if the pontiff still is the man of lawlessness in some way, shape or form. But, since the Christian Right tries to keep control of the United States, and since there are conservative Catholics nuttier than Opus Dei — Catholic versions of dominionists like Ted Cruz’s dad — it’s a political concern. A weird part of this is the fascination many Protestants in the U.S. have with the papacy, almost as weird as the fascination many Americans have with the British monarch.

That said, there’s little new on that. When St. Ronald of Reagan officially established diplomatic relations with Vatican City, he faced little pushback from fundagelical Protestants on either theological or First Amendment grounds. I was still religiously Lutheran then; I didn’t totally like it on the first basis. Today? I find it abhorrent on First Amendment grounds.

==

Update, May 8: From my main blog, here's my take on the new pope.

Holy Week: A secularist perception 30 years out

Salvador Dali's ethereal version of The Last Supper, not the Lord's Supper. The title is theologically correct per Matthew.

It's actually been a bit over 30 years since I graduated from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri with my master's of divinity degree, realizing before graduation that, at minimum, I wasn't a fundamentalist Lutheran.

But, I "searched" for a couple of years, looking mentally at more liberal Lutheranism, and bits of other more liberal Protestantism, too. I looked at Unitarianism. Went to a few services. Looking for a possible full-time career, as I realized I couldn't do liberal Lutheranism, either, I inquired about the Unitarian ministry. I was told I'd have to do another full-year internship, and then, there was still no guarantee of a hiring, of course.

Went to a few meetings of the St. Louis chapter of The Ethical Society; already then, it may have been the largest outpost of the organization.

I also ran through Buddhist ideas, what I knew then, in my head. (And, yes, once again, contra Robert Wright, it's a religion. Still is.)

I didn't think much about Hinduism, despite Eckankar having an office or whatever across one side street from the seminary's grounds. (Said grounds, with lots of semi-forested area, also attracted several people I am guessing were Shinto. And, real Shinto, not Meiji state Shinto.) Never thought about Islam.

Anyway, I passed on all of them, and by 30 years ago, was a confirmed secularist. Here's the last of a six-part series on my journey.

A few years later, encountering the self-help world, I tried to do that. Even read some of the "manifestation" type books, and — I couldn't.

About 20 years ago or a bit more, I got lost while hiking in Canyonlands National Park, in late July. I ran out of water. I cycled through prayers to Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, Olympian and Norse divinities, Vishnu and more — and then stopped.

Anyway, here I am today.

Whipping through friends' of friends' Facebook pages yesterday, I saw .... gack.

Along with pious Lutheranism, cheapish memes. AI-generated versions of Maundy Thursday and Palm Sunday art. (This sets aside Hyam Maccoby's claim that this event probably happened on Sukkoth, not Passover [if it happened at all].)

Not on Lutheran friends' of friends' pages, but elsewhere, I've seen the "If Jesus had a gun, he'd still be alive." Some wingnuts may be trying to "own the liberals" with that, but others may not have a clue that most varieties of Christianity preach a substitutionary atonement. So, no, Jesus with a gun defeats the whole purpose, according to Christianity. (And yes, the idea that many self-professed [self-alleged?] Christians might be that theologically illiterate is no shock to me and shouldn't be to you.)

Anyway, even without the more cringey stuff on friends' of friends' pages, college or seminary alums of mine, I realized just how foreign that all is to me. 

It's not as distant as it may be for an Orthodox Jew, let alone a Buddhist, but ... it's foreign.

That said, Gnu Atheism — especially Jesus mysticism subvariants that seem to believe Jesus MUST BE and MUST BE PROVEN TO BE nonexistent for atheism to be firm, are just about as foreign. And possibly even more stupid. It's definitely more illogical.

And, with that said, as a good secular humanist, as long as fundagelically religious — and Gnu Atheist — neither pick my pocket, nor break my bones, per Thomas Jefferson, I have less and less interest on a regular basis at going attack dog on either one.

Wrongness by two biblical criticism academics

 Both these come via r/AcademicBiblical, but it's the scholars that are at issue.

=

My respect for Paula Fredriksen just went further in the toilet with this stupidity about what actually counts as monotheism. The convert to Judaism went high on my teh stupidz some time ago with this backdoor attempt to inject Zionism into Palestinian demographics, which led me to find other intellectual problems.

==

And, my respect went down for a younger-generation scholar as well. Via a comment, on YouTube, Dan McClellan justifies a pre-70 Markan dating in part on Mark getting info from Peter before he was martyred in Rome. I dropped my piece on how Tacitus is almost certainly a Christian interpolation, "Christians" didn't exist then, there weren't enough Jesus followers to be on Nero's radar, etc. He goes on to claim Paul was also killed then, even though he was not a Roman citizen, the last one-quarter of Acts is highly non-historical and ergo he almost certainly never got to Rome.

McClellan is right on the issue, near the end of the piece, about how modern fundagelical colleges and seminaries dispute a strawman version of critical scholarship — if they engage even that.

 

Texas Mennonites: Combining antivaxxerism with Calvinist-like determinism

 Yes, I know that Anabaptist types like Mennonites aren't Calvinist per se, but many of them hold to the same rigid determinism, as do the parents of the child who was the first measles death in West Texas a few weeks ago.

The child's parents make that clear.

The Texas parents of an unvaccinated 6-year-old girl who died from measles Feb. 26 told the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense in a video released Monday that the experience did not convince them that vaccination against measles was necessary.

“She says they would still say ‘Don’t do the shots,’” an unidentified translator for the parents said. “They think it’s not as bad as the media is making it out to be.”

The West Texas measles outbreak, the biggest in the state in 30 years, has infected more than 270 people and hospitalizing dozens of them. Public health officials have repeatedly told Texans that studies have time and time again shown that the safest and most effective way to avoid contracting the very infectious, life-threatening disease is to vaccinate with the measles-mumps-rubella shot.

The couple, members of a Mennonite community in Gaines County with traditionally low vaccination rates, spoke on camera in both English and Low German to CHD Executive Director Polly Tommey and CHD Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker.

“It was her time on Earth,” the translator said the parents told her. “They believe she’s better off where she is now.”

What do you say in response to that?

It's hard.

First, once again, a reminder that there is NO "theology of the bible," contra these people and other literalists in general. On the issue in hand, in placed like Third Isaiah or Job, you bet I can find support for not just Calvinist-style double predestination on salvation vs damnation, but more specifically, on a broader general determinism. 

Martin Luther, despite his rejection of double predestination, or so he claimed to be doing in "The Enslaved Will" ("Bondage of the Will") actually really supported it in many ways himself.

I can find arguments against such determinism, though, starting with the Yahwist version of the creation story in Genesis 2-3.

Beyond that lurk other issues.

First, reading between the lines of Covenant Hospital's statement, these parents are willing to lie for their religion.

Lying in the name of religion? All-American! And yet another reason why secularists generally score better on issues of ethics than the religious do, especially the fundamentalist within religions. And, that's not limited to Christianity, nor to the United States.

And, with that sort of lying, they surely don't care about endangering others.

Health experts say it could take a full year to fully contain the West Texas measles outbreak:

That said, per that same piece, is this all about religion or not? One person says no:

Katherine Wells, director of public health for the City of Lubbock, during a Tuesday meeting of the Big Cities Health Coalition, a national organization for large metropolitan health departments ... said efforts to increase the vaccination rates in Gaines County, which is about 70 miles from Lubbock, and the surrounding region have been slow as trust in the government has seemingly reached an all-time low.

“We are seeing, just like the rest of Americans, this community has seen a lot of stories about vaccines causing autism, and that is leading to a lot of this vaccine hesitancy, not religion,” she said.

But, putting the cloak of religion on non-religious beliefs is an all-American pastime. And, that, too, is probably not limited to Christianity nor to the US. Nor is it limited to fundagelical forms of religion, whether Christianity or otherwise.

As for Mennonite distrust of government? That goes back, ultimately, to the Peasants' Revolt. But, we're not in the neither Holy, nor Roman, nor Empire today. Besides that? Romans 13.

More wrongness at r/AcademicBiblical

 I "couldn't help" but visit there again recently.

Here's a mix of errors there plus WTFs.

While Saul's 100 foreskins from David was seemingly bizarre, the fact that an "evil spirit" came on him the next day does NOT mean, contra this, that he was "possessed" at that time. And, in the context of 1 Samuel 18, with an assist from Paul Davidson, it's not actually bizarre. Rather, this is a "bounty marker," like ears of dead coyotes being sent to US Fish and Wildlife.

Also per that assist from Paul, much of 1 Samuel 18 is NOT in the LXX. Anybody who knows much about textual criticism of the Tanakh knows that the Former Prophets in general are the worst part of the Hebrew Bible. Missing? Among other things, the "evil" spirit in v. 10. 

==

Disagree with Paul Davidson (Captain Haddock) and others, whether they're just citing largely continental academics or they actually agree, in answers on this piece, that Eden in Genesis 2-3 is at least partially metaphorical for the Temple and the Fall a metaphor for the Babylonian Exile. The problem is that this is J material, unless you're claiming VERY late editing for it, or else entirely throwing the documentary hypothesis out the window. I don't buy either one. Per this post, if we restrict ourselves to the first half, could Eden be metaphorical for the Temple? Yes. But, standing by Genesis 2-3 being J material, you have to find some other answer for what the Fall is then metaphorical of. If it's a general expulsion from the presence of (the) god(s), a la end of golden age myths in general? I'm OK with that.

==

Here, a discussion of the origin of Yahweh which doesn't mention the Midianite hypothesis. 

And related, at another post? At least in my book, contra this commenter, the Midianite hypothesis is not the same as the Kenite hypothesis.

==

That said, sometimes the post itself is the laugher, like this guy asking people to back him up on his claim that Adam and Eve got booted from Eden for having a three-way with a second male. This is also once again a failure of moderators for leaving this post up, including any that are left from two years ago when they ganged up to ban me.

==

If you don't get the idea of puns, or don't get grammatical gender, then don't push back against the answers you get. 

==

Putting Hindu-Buddhist carts before consciousness horses

Big fail about 2/3 the way through on this Nautilus piece. Even if the no-self idea is true, the author admits that the appearance of a self may still be “real.”

A logical derivation from that is what Hume said to the lady who asked him how he could sleep at night with the “problem of causation,” not knowing if the sun would come up tomorrow or not. Hume simply said, he went to sleep.

In other words, he “acted as if.”

Likewise, the “no-self” view does not extinguish egoism.

And, the “shared self” view smoked too much Buddhism. (Or Hinduism, more likely, since she mentions “Atman.”

Of course, when you have the piece author having written a book, “Non-physicalist Theories of Consciousness,” you’ll get that.

LCMS President Matthew Harrison's latest hypocrisy — a deeper theological dive

About a month ago, I said at my main blog that President-for-Life of the LCMS Matthew Harrison was full of crap — hypocritical crap — in his response to Trump surrogate and general nutter Michael Flynn.

Flynn, per that link, attacked Lutheran Immigration Refugee Services for getting large federal grants for ... uh, helping immigrants. That's even though the LCMS, unlike Rome, can't see its way to doing social justice while remaining theologically conservative.

Flynn, one of Elmo Musk's DOGE-y minions, is of course peddling twaddle. 

So is Matty in his response.

Here, I'm going to expand on some theological issues that I didn't look at there.

Here's the start of that hypocrisy. Matty says:

We don’t say much to or about the government.

Then goes on to talk extensively about the government indeed.

We have suffered formal legal action and much more as we have watched as DEI philosophy (formally rejected by our church body along with white supremacy) has pervaded nearly every aspect of government activity, even as the U.S. government has burgeoned beyond all ethical and rational propriety, in effect stealing the future from our children.

Talking about the size of government in general is talking about government in general. The "taxation is theft" that appears to be in the background of that last line is bigger bullshit, as it's Trump who has run up large parts of the federal budget deficit, Reagan who started it, and Dick Cheney in between who said "deficits don't matter."

Matty doubles down later, while claiming it's "just me, not the LCMS":

Let me just note (and this is NOT an official position of the LCMS): I’m personally pleased with DOGE. The federal government is bloated beyond all rational limits. It can’t fund its activities without accumulating debt. And it’s failing in its basic tasks.

Please.

First, Federal spending ticked up during COVID, yes, but since then, has returned to close to its historic 60-year norm. See the St. Louis Fed. St. Louis, where you are, Matty. Let's add that, in 1998-2001, we actually ran budget surpluses. Gee (with carryover to fiscal 2001) what party controlled the presidency then, Matt? Arguably, you're violating the Eighth Commandment (Lutheran-Catholic-Anglican-Orthodox numbering) by bearing false witness against a political party.

In fact, Trump himself, on Super Bowl Sunday, just blathered to Bret Baier about $36 trillion in national debt without admitting his first term, he was responsible for one-quarter of that.

And again, this is talking about government.

And, because the devil supposedly loves a bible-quoting secularist, now would be the time for Romans 13, I believe:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. 2 Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment

There you are, Matt.

And, if that's not enough? Verse 7 says:

Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue.

(Harrison hasn't called for tax-refusal disobedience. But, somebody might take his ball and run.)

As Jesus said at the end of the tale of the Good Samaritan? Maybe you should "go and do likewise"? 

DEI? Most of it is a capitalist pile of junk. And, no, Matt, even if there is a god, he, she or it didn't invent capitalism. When done rightly, as Costco knows, it's good for business and its good ethics as well.

You didn't mention critical race theory, but I'll but you at least have personal, if not official, thoughts about it. Well, they would be wrong; of that I have no doubt. 

I can say that with confidence for two reasons. The first is that most White wingnuts blather about critical race theory without knowing what it is. The second is that I've read "Silent Covenants" by Derrick Bell, one of the developers of critical race theory, and found it informative and more good than bad.

Let's next do a gotcha call-out, Matt. You say at the end:

At the same time, a well-regulated border, sound immigration policy, and welcoming space for persecuted refugees are all fundamental parts of a God-pleasing answer to the question:

OK, what's your answer to the genocide in Gaza? I already know. Your denomination hasn't called it a genocide, AFAIK, and has basically ignored it and the countless refugees Israel has created. (The LCMS is fundamentalist in its own way, but not evangelical millennialists, so it has no reason to expect Israel to bring on Armageddon.)

For that matter, since we're talking primarily about Hispanics, and you ARE talking about the government, what's your personal — and denominational leadership — take on the United States' history of coups and other meddling in Latin America that destabilizes countries and creates refugees?

But, then let's get to the rhetorical question that follows.

Who will contribute to this marvelous and blessed American experiment?

THAT, my "dear sir," is clearly untheological. The "United States of America" is not in Christian scriptures, and to claim the "American experiment" is "blessed" as an implication that it is, and so is a theological lie. (Paul, in Romans, said that the Roman imperium was divinely established. He did NOT claim it was "marvelous" or "blessed.") It's about as much a lie as the drivel from the Gun Nuts for Luther group which out of thin air implies there's a biblical, god-given right to gunz. It also is a violation of at least the spirit of the First Amendment you claim to love.

Beyond that? As a riff on John Winthrop's city on a hill angle? It's Calvinist, for one thing, and a theological error that, per Augustine, is the religious version of a First Amendment error. It's a confusion and a conflation of the "two kingdoms."

Harrison knows that Zwingli died in battle, sword in hand, and Luther condemned him for that.

Parallel to that, to riff on pseudo-Paul in Ephesians? Christianity is supposed to be about neither Blacks nor Whites, and re Matt's statement, neither Russian nor American.

So, taking sides on sociological issues as a church denomination is itself problematic theologically, above and beyond other issues.

As for the German immigrants you say founded the LCMS?

I said on my original piece about the Lutefash that Harrison was enough of a political chameleon to largely stay above the fray. To the degree he thinks its too much heavy lifting, he'll ignore the underground network of pastors and congregations, of which I only scratched the surface in that initial piece.

That may or may not still be true. But, on secular politics, I guess he just can't help himself.

As for the First Amendment, not Commandment? Contra a college friend of mine, it cuts both ways, per Jefferson. Beyond that, to divert back to theology? Good old Lutheran Richard John Neuhaus (slightly more liberal on biblical criticism than the LCMS brethren he left, but just as conservative as many politically) talked about the "public square." Yes, Keith, churches have every right to participate in the public square. And other participants have just as much right to critique and criticize them as any other participant.

I would say "Here I stand, I can do no other" as a bit of additional mocking, but of course (OF COURSE!) Luther never actually said that. It's just another part of 24-karat gilt Luther legend. FAR more of that legend is exposed here.

From that second link, this observation of mine:

The "yes I'm right" stance of Luther himself, not only vis-a-vis things where he clearly was, but other issues, such as versus the Reformed on the Eucharist, versus many Reformed and other Lutherans on the issue of adiophora and more, seems to still run strong in much of the conservative wing of Lutheranism. (Let's not forget that Luther thought he was competent to condemn Copernicus' heliocentric theory of the solar system, and rushed to do so when his book was published.)

Is quite pertinent to the situation at hand.

God's Ghostwriters: Semi-disappointing foul ball from Candida Moss

God's Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible by Candida R. Moss
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

As usual, this is an expanded version of my Goodreads review. I've removed the spoiler alert that hid about half of the review, as well as expanding around the corners on various bits.

God’s Ghostwriters? This had a fair amount of disappointment, especially given that Candida Moss’ book on the “Myth of Persecution” was pretty good. That said, one moderate level "issue," there, not an error, but an issue of historiography, became a larger-level issue here.

At about 35-40 percent through, I was thinking this can’t be more than 3 stars. By 60 percent or so, I’m thinking, it can’t be more than 2. But, at around the 75 percent mark, I’m thinking, well, it can be 3. But, I eventually went back to 2 stars.

Contra many low-star reviewers on Goodreads, my issue is not primarily with some of her conjectures, but with some godawful mistakes on biblical criticism — mistakes that people below her academic pay grade, and below mine, know are wrong, at least in the first case. (Some of those low-star reviewers appeared to me to view her conjectures as "wokeism." None used that term, but, clicking through to their profiles, it's clear they were of that mindset.)

With that? On to those biblical criticism errors.

First, she gives the appearance of thinking Paul was a Roman citizen. (I didn't put down a page number in my notes when and whee I first observed that.) Moss doesn't explicitly say "Paul was a Roman citizen," but she does express thoughts in that direction. WRONG! Roman citizenship was mentioned or claimed by Paul, of course. The "of course" isn't meant to be snarky, but if it's taken that way, so be it. (Bart Ehrman, or one of his hacks writing on Bart's site, also thinks Paul was a Roman citizen. God, so much biblical scholarship is in the shitter.)

Related?

Second, she thinks the last one-quarter of Acts, from Paul’s temple arrest on, is historical, or at least historical enough to have him getting to Rome. WRONG! Go here for the particularly "high" ahistoricity of the last one-quarter of Acts, as well as comments on Paul not being a Roman citizen, to tie back to the above. Beyond that, Paul almost certainly never got to Rome. Moss does, correctly, in "Myth" believe the Tacitus passage about Neronean persecution of Christians is an interpolation, so why she seems to think Paul got to Rome, or hints at thinking he was a Roman citizen, I don't know.

Third, she seems to give some credibility to the historicity of Papias. Not.Even.Wrong. Based on a scribal slave of Cicero’s, and his veneration, if you will, she claims that an enslaved Mark would have testified to the veracity of recording Peter. Well, beyond this being based on one enslaved scribe and anecdotal comments about him, rather than a collection of statements to that end from patrician Romans, it’s also of course dependent on giving credibility to the historicity of Papias. Sadly, she's not the only person I've come across recently to, in my opinion, give undue credibility to him.See here and here.

Fourth? I found her claim that Mark doesn't have screwed-up geography on Jesus' peregrinations around western Galilee and southwestern Syria to be laughable. (She said this was actually the Markan Jesus being dilatory on facing his death, in a slave-like passive-aggressive way. This in turn assumed, on a non-fundagelical reading of Mark, that the Markan Jesus knew his mission would result in his death. Also dubious, as this was before Mark 6, which is where John the Baptizer meets his end.) In reality, to pick up at Mark 5, first, neither Gerasa, Gergasa, or Gadara borders the See of Galilee, so Jesus could not have gone to "the other side" even if some manuscripts leave out "in the boat." Yes, it's Mark 7 where the geographic muddle is worse, but it starts before John's death. And, speaking of Mark 7, Sidon is NOT NOT NOT in the Decapolis, or "the area of the Decapolis," period and end of story. It is, of course (needed again for snark?) not even a Hellenistic city.

I think one could make half a case for Jesus' foreknowledge in a non-fundagelical reading of Mark's narrative, but no more. Maybe three-quarters in Matthew and Luke, and fully in John. But no more than a generous halfway in Mark and hold on to John.

OK, with that said? My thoughts about her explication on ancient Roman slavery, New Testament slave imagery and its literalness and more are long. Beyond the historiography issue mentioned above, there's also the issue of anecdotal takes. I don't mind a certain degree of speculative history, but when you're trying to move beyond the speculative, you also need to move beyond the anecdotal.

First, the general slavery issue in Imperial Rome? Best estimates outside of Italy are that 10-20 percent of the provincial Roman population was enslaved. That’s well below the 1860 US South’s 30 percent, despite slave importation having been banned (on paper, at least) for more than 50 years. (The 11 eventually seceding states were at 42 percent slave population; in all 15 non-Northern slave states [there were still a few up there in 1860] it was 32 percent.) The high side is probably no higher than the three non-Delaware border states, I had said in my original review, and my guess was close enough for jazz, at 14.3 percent. 

In other words, yes, there were a lot of slaves in ancient Rome; there weren’t THAT many, and many freemen who weren’t Roman citizens and weren’t agricultural landlords might well not have owned any. Even in Italy itself, they weren’t more than one-third of the population. Wiki’s article on Roman slavery also estimates that half of all slaves were owned by the “elite,” for which it offers a demographic determination — less than 1.5 percent of the Imperial population. In other words, the picture that Moss paints by insinuation — that most freeborns had at least a couple of household slaves? Taint so. Wikipedia's Slavery in ancient Rome piece has more. In the US, for all 15 slave states in 1860? About 5  percent of White folks were slave owners; putting it in family terms, it was about 30 percent. (Side note: Failure to dive more into demographics is one reason "Myth of Persecution" got 4 stars, not 5.)

Splitting this out per the above and applying back to Imperial Rome? Surely 5 percent, maybe 7-8 percent, of people in Italy owned slaves. We could say 10 percent in Rome. In the provinces? Probably no more than 3 percent. On families? Maybe 40 percent in Italy; no more than 20 percent in the provinces on average.

Also related to demographics, and related to the above? Moss presents an issue of Imperial Rome as towns and cities (and those humongous slave farms as assumed in the background). Well, in “Pagans and Christians” Robin Lane Fox reminds us that it ain't so. Not even close. Especially if you get away from Italy, Attica, and Alexandria-centered Egypt, the majority of the Roman population elsewhere probably lived more than 20 miles away from a town of 5,000 or more, and I'm being conservative with that guesstimate. These were SMALL artisans and small "freehold" farmers. In Fox's rural Anatolia, few people owned slaves.

Now, that said, it's a "commonplace" that Christianity was a religion of the towns and cities. Nonetheless, even there, not everybody owned slaves. So, would extreme focus on — pushing of — motifs of enslavement been a good selling point? Or was Paul, since he's the first New Testament "evangelist," legends of the disciples aside — have been pushing to the rich who owned those slaves? And, like the "Cuius regio, ejus religio" in states of the Holy Roman Empire after the Thirty Years War, slaves were along for the ride under the "neither slave nor free" rubric? This, too, Moss does not explore.

One other thing she does not do is explore John, vs. the Pauline corpus and Mark as the original of the synoptics. And, of course, John — in current form — opens with Jesus as pre-existent divine being. There is no Pauline kenosis. There is no idea of Jesus possibly being god's slave. So, Moss has to elide John, in essence, and yes, I think it's deliberate.

Scribal work by currently enslaved having deliberate errors as “an act of resistance,” as she claims with naming errors in the Old Latin Bobiensis? Tosh. That first makes the assumption we know the scribe was working for a particular owner, rather than being for hire. It secondly assumes we know the scribe was an ardent Christian-hating pagan. Third, it assumes he knew that he could get away with it. A pair of anecdotes about Aesop doing somewhat similar, taken from a biography written 600 years after his death, doesn’t really prove much. It’s also not clear how historical — or ahistorical — that bio is if Moss is referencing “The Aesop Romance.” Yes, parts of it may have been written “only” 200 years after his death, per Wiki, but 1st C CE for the final, and probably 3rd CE for current MSS? Oh, parts of it also borrowed from Ahiqar, at least in some versions. “Nice” of Moss not to mention any of this.

Also, no, Candida, Tyrannio was NOT a “manumitted … slave” other than in a purely technical sense. He was a prisoner of war. Your own description makes that clear. Ergo, we don’t know, if you don’t offer proof, how he was treated within Cicero’s late Republican Rome. Yes, he was technically “emancipated,” but per his Wiki page, Plutarch faults that as not the right action. Wiki also notes he reportedly became an acclaimed teacher, including of Strabo. (She mentions Strabo three or four pages later, but not in conjunction with Tyrannio!)

That said, Chapter 7, The Faithful Christian, was good. It set enslavement’s actuality within Christian language of being a slave to or of Christ, used many a time by Paul, of course. From there, Moss talks about pistis/fides, and how this faith, or faithfulness, which is a better translation of the famous Habakkuk passage, that the righteous, or just-living, man, or person, will be saved by their faithfulness (with “saved” also NOT meaning “eternal life” in that passage), is a relational issue, and that cuts both ways between enslaved and enslaver.. And, of course, and as she notes, Luther basically blew this, not just on “faith vs works” but the whole relational nature. On the both ways, she notes a little bit, but not as much as she could, how many Roman masters went “relatively” light on punishments and knew this usually produced slaves who were relationally better, or more faithful. She also discusses the idea of a spirit taking over a person, then the Holy Spirit. From this, she makes the claim (no, really!) that many Christian denominations today, because of this, still practice a “minor exorcism” before baptism. (No, really!)

One other interesting note? Moss references Jesus telling his hearers to forsake everything, in Mark 10, as the family details are omitted in Mt/Lk, interestingly, and that in turn they would get back mother and brothers and sisters, as well as other rewards, but NO father, perhaps because of the tyrannical nature of the paterfamilias, and no, not just because god is the father of all.

One other good thing I got? Whether Paul was tentmaker, tanner, or general leatherworker, in larger cities, there probably was a guild for that. Per a Jesus Seminar derived book of a few years ago, I had the light bulb go on that the ancient Greek mysteries in all likelihood were NOT the source of Paul’s creating the Lord’s Supper (create it he did, the “what I received” language is always an introduction to something he’s claiming to have by divine revelation) but rather, the Hellenistic Greek guilds’ monthly, or whenever, dinners, complete with invocations of their patron deity, as in Ephesian silversmiths and “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” (Insert blog link.) Well, Paul’s brainstorm would have been easier for him with a few such guild dinners being attended by him.

And, with all that?

The last tipping point down to 2 instead of up to 3 stars? This book could have been tighter, as well as less speculative, on its theme, as well as not having the errors in biblical criticism and the errors on demographics.

Related? There's too much food for thought for this to get the "meh" tag, let alone the "bs" one. But, Moss apparently is going to be headed more toward modernist sociology critiques of the New Testament and its world and I'll probably not ride that bus any more.

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Plague of Cyprian nearly ended the Roman Empire? No, really?

Apparently that's one of the claims of Kyle Harper in "The Fate of Rome," which I had never heard of before until going down some internet rabbit trails.

Did infectious diseases and even meso-level / meso-time climate change have more of an effect on the disintegration of the Roman Empire than older historians thought with fingering barbarian invasions, the rise of Christianity, etc? 

Certainly.

Were they decisive or nearly so?

Likely not.

So, the "No, really?" is rhetorical, in case that weren't already clear.

Was there a "Plague of Cyprian" and was it ebola or something similar, as Harper claims in the book and per that Wiki page? 

Almost certainly not. 

Per this Cambridge monograph by Sabine Huebner in response to him, Harper is almost certainly wrong on the dates of this plague and its origin, ergo wrong on its source. Independently of all that, the respondent says he's almost certainly wrong on this plague of non-Cyprian causing devastation in hinterlands Egypt. And derived from that, he's even more certainly wrong on claims that it nearly toppled the empire.

Roman historians know this period was the tail end of the famous crisis of the third century. Population loss from infectious diseases were a problem, but whatever this plague was and whenever its dates, it could not have nearly toppled the empire. Even at Harper's early date, this is 15 years after the end of the Severan dynasty and the instability that had already introduced.

And, it flat period could not have led to the Decian order for sacrifices and the Decian persecution, contra Harper. Per Huebner, the first mention of this plague did not occur until after Decius was dead.

With Huebner as co-author, here are parts one, two and three of a multi-academic response to Harper on various issues. (The first is 13 pages; the second and third are 10-pages, all easy reads.) Part two starts by noting his taking an extreme position on the Antonine plague and also flat-out ignoring a lot of modern research. The fact that no major invasions from the east happened in the first years after the Antonine plague and that, in the longer term, after the 192-93 coups, the Severan dynasty ruled 42 years, all undercut Harper. Beyond the Plague of Cyprian, part 1 is an overview critique of the whole book, much of it focused on problems with Harper's "maximalist" take on climate change. Part 3 looks to a fair degree at his take on the Justinian plauge.

And, with that, I'll take a pass on this book. And probably on Harper in general. (IIRC, I saw his "Plagues upon the Earth" at my library about a year ago and took a pass.) 

He's also writing a third book in this same general line, about problems with human overgrowth. It, too, may be interesting, but will likely run a narrow maximalist take on modern plagues.

Related to that? Per this person's thesis, Harper reportedly has professional problems related to his stridently pushing his thesis, and other personal issues as well. (Per other information, the intersection of professional and personal were student protests at Oklahoma University alleging that he didn't take seriously enough two cases of faculty reportedly using the N-word, and of blackface on campus, and that also questioned his dedication to diversity, equity and inclusion. This was when he was OU provost. When the OU student newspaper's header uses the "long-embattled" cliche, you've got problems.) The graduate also notes that Harper, and Amber Kearns, who has followed in his footsteps in some ways, also ignore the possible polemical value of writings from that general time about the plague's virulence, including overstating its death rate and its effect on the empire. And, on Harper's case, if conservative evangelical White Christianity accompanies the background to the student protests, I can see the background to him NOT discounting the polemical value of Christian letters overstating the death rate and calling it judgment on the empire. OTOH, lower-star reviews of his "Plagues upon the Earth" dinged him for beating evolution like a dead horse, as in people who are NOT fundagelicals were saying "we know evolution, you're beating a dead horse."

As for what this plague might have been? The Plague of Justinian has now been fairly well identified as the first incursion of the bubonic plague. Could this have been an earlier version? The "thesis" link suggests Lassa fever, which I also find unlikely, if nothing else as with Ebola on the grounds of where the plague originated, and tentatively suggests measles, which I could certainly accept.

Ode to a dead mouse

When I got home,

And opened the door, 

I heard the noise, 

And my first thought was, 

“I got you! 

The glue trap 

Worked.” 

 

Then, 

I went in the kitchen 

To open carefully 

A pantry door 

Carefully, was the plan, 

In case you were 

Agitated enough to bite. 

And then I saw you 

In the sink 

Trap-attached 

By your tail and a couple of feet. 

Powerful enough 

In your panic 

To push through 

A pantry door 

Trap and all. 

 

 I partially covered you 

With a large glass lid 

Until you quickly 

Went into panicked screeching. 

So, I pulled it off. 

 

 I went outside 

For my power walk 

Figuring you would be 

Closer to dead 

When I returned. 

 

Wrong! 

You were, rather, C

loser to escaped, 

Held only by part of your tail, 

Any feet previously trapped 

Now extricated. 

 

And so I acted. 

I first tried to trap you 

And the glue trap 

In a pot. 

But then saw 

That a 2-quart pot was too shallow 

To hold you in your frenzy. 

As you tried to scramble out. 

 

Tired of hearing you 

Scooting at night 

For days on end, 

I resolved. 

 

The pot I turned over 

And dropped you in the sink, 

Small bit of tail still trap-pinned 

And brought it down 

As best I could 

On your rodentine head 

Even as your black mouse eyes 

Stared back at me. 

 

A second shot 

Had more effect 

And a third 

Brought a trickle of blood 

From your mouth. 

Fuck you, Peter Singer. 

 

On the prose side, I reject Singer’s speciesism. I’ll kill wasps and hornets, and some bees. Flies are so-so. I’ll kill mosquitoes. Spiders stay alive, unless I know it’s a black widow or brown recluse. 

But a mouse inside the house? Or apartment in my case? Between it disturbing my sleep at times, and being a potential health hazard, it has to go. I thought I had caught it in a basket nearly a week ago. I took that outside and tossed all contents into the parking lot. It sure looked like a mouse running away. Maybe it was Might Mouse and returned. Maybe it had a partner, of the opposite sex; if it was a female left inside, it definitely needed to go. Maybe I was mistaken about what I dumped out late at night, but I don’t think so. 

I didn’t like the black mouse eyes staring at me, but it is what it is. I mulled through general animal tenderness, Singer’s speciesism and other things, after dumping dying mouse and glue trap in an apartment dumpster then walking to Walmart. 

On the way back, I thought of Keynes: 

“In the long run, we’re all dead.” 

Your long run just ended mouse-young. 

I’ll be there eventually. So will you, Peter Singer.