The truth about Berenice, sister of Herod Agrippa II

 

As in the Berenice mentioned with him late in Acts.

Per Bruce Chilton, not only will you not find it in Acts (shock me), you also won't find it in Josephus.

First, background. Given Paul's accusation of taking goys into the Holy Place, when he said it was for Jews fulfilling a Nazirite vow, Chilton notes that a couple of years later, she completed her own such vow, complete with shorn hair. That was after Florus replaced Festus. He then notes it was Berenice, not Agrippa II, who appealed to Florus, head still shorn, at this point. Josephus will tell you that, as he'll later tell you that she started an affair with Titus, which drew the ire of later Roman historians such as Dio Cassius.

But, he'll also claim Berenice and Agrippa II had an incestuous relationship. That said, he attacks her morals, not his, in a mix of sexism and probably some sort of political triangulation.

Chilton later scores him on that issue.

This is part of a new book by Chilton. In a later paragraph, he explains why:

Part of the enjoyment of conducting research was that Berenice made an impact on Roman sources, and evaluating them made a break from the attention to Aramaic texts that has preoccupied me in recent years. Yet whether in Latin or in Greek, whether or not pagan, and whether Christian or Jewish, the ancient sources are palpably wary of Berenice. Acts is not the only writing that doesn’t let her come to voice. (Oddly, Luke in Acts 24:24 does not even mention that Drusilla, the wife of Festus’ predecessor Felix, was Berenice’s sister.) Other members of the Herodian dynasty were also controversial, Herod the Great most of all. But Herod had an apologist, Nicholas of Damascus, who permitted that vicious but effective king to come to voice in the pages of the Jewish historian Josephus. Berenice had no such defender, and Josephus—who might reasonably have taken her part—joined in the rumor that Berenice engaged in incest with her brother, Agrippa II (Antiquities 20 §§ 145-146). In regard to Berenice, Josephus showed himself more the partisan of Rome than he was the advocate of Judaism that he liked to pose as. Indeed, he becomes incoherent in his desire to please his Roman patrons, ridiculing Berenice as libidinous but extolling Agrippa II, her alleged sexual partner, as noble. A woman who provoked the pushback that Berenice received from so many quarters obviously deserves attention, and tracing antipathy to her is an education itself.

Indeed, she deserves more attention. 

That said, Chilton adds that Josephus' rumor may have started with Cynic critics in Rome, perhaps in an attempt to block a marriage to Titus. It worked, as most biblical and classical historians know. Titus dismissed her when he took the imperial throne. She died sometime not too long after his own death, it appears. He dismissed her once earlier, in the mid-70s, and may have intended to recall her again in a couple of years. 

That said, the last one-quarter of Acts is far more nonhistorical than Chilton mentions. I discuss that in much more detail. 

But I DID decide what to do on my most recent vacations

 This is a refutation of Massimo Pigliucci's most recent piece defending determinism, which I decided not to link to.

I pondered it a bit during my winter holidays vacation at the end of last year and start of this, and even more during spring vacation in March.

On the winter vacation, after it started, more than once, I decided to adjust where I would go, and when.

In March, based on weather, I first decided, before leaving home, to kill my original plan of going to Joshua Tree National Park, including the Sonoran Desert side, on day 1, moving day 2 up, and adjusting in other ways.

I decided to start my vacation here, on the Mother Road, then up to Mojave National Preserve, rather than going to Joshua Tree National Park. 

While that was weather dependent, other decisions made within this trip, like the winter vacations ones, were made after talking to and interacting with other people.

Massimo's version of determinism appears to be more than just a physicalism tautology that folks like Coel the slightly bonkers British astronomer and even more clearly, a chap handled as Disagreeable Me used to push on one of his longer-ago sites.

No, it appears to be something more strongly philosophical than that.

And per Johnson vs Berkeley, while I didn't kick an actual rock while on vacation, I still "refute it thus." Per Johnson, any stone I kicked was one I decided to kick. And, since Pigliucci has in the past largely rejected the idea of classical informal logical fallacies ... 

Quantum microeffects aside? Or maybe not aside, since we're arguing this from an entirely secularist, non-metaphysical angle?

First, while quantum mechanics is, generally, classical statistical mechanics all the way down, nonetheless, at a small enough scale just above the fuzzy borderline with the fully quantum world, a "butterfly effect" can indeed happen that is not classical statistical mechanics turtles all the way down.

On the organic, or semi-organic side, call it the "virus effect" instead of the "butterfly effect." A virus could actually get knocked slightly hither or yon, and perhaps infect in a slightly different way. 

That's all it takes.

I've long said I'm not a classic free willer. I've said that I support subconscious semi-free will. Subselves and more. I've cited Daniel Wegner and his "The Illusion of Conscious Will" many a time. Beyond the issue of subconscious free will, or unconscious free will, Wegner talks about how free will, if not an "affect," is similar to that. If we think, or maybe rather believe that we're freely willing something, we have a higher emotional investment in the idea of free will in general and also in the particular matter at hand. (I also think Wegner's idea is compatible with my idea of "psychological constraint," which is that our "working space" for freedom of action is psychologically constrained by past life events, especially traumatic ones.) 

Tying this with Dan Dennett and his ideas on consciousness? (I reject his ideas on compatibilist free will.) I don't think "subselves" and "multiple drafts" are incompatible. I think that certain subselves, on a subselves-based version of consciousness, can be seen as more "core" and more stable than others, and therefore more likely to rise to the top of the "drafts." These more stable subselves have more of a "commitment" to the quasi-affect idea that they're causing something.

I don't have to prove my version of free will right. 

All I have to do is show determinism wrong.

Now, in a sense, per Schrödinger, referencing the observer effect, I can't truly do that on quantum effect. But, I've laid the mental framework for that.

Determinism suffers another flaw, this one on the psychological side, for secularists.

I think it remains tainted with Deist ideas of the god who winds up the world like clockwork. David Hume, not Boswell, has refuted that one. 

And, to riff on Wegner, if a quantum butterfly effect means that another person's actions leading up to my interaction with them can't be determined, then the emotional affect of the perception of free will at the moment of that action certainly can't be determined.

Beyond that, modern cosmology and its Big Bang say that ideas of determinism, like general relativity, must yield to the quantum frontier. 

I think Pigliucci's neo-Stoicism, to go beyond Enlightenment empiricism, has influenced him on this one. It's the same idea is Deism, though: a "Logos" put it all in order.

To riff on Hellenistic philosophy in response? Massimo doesn't need to read Stephen Greenblatt to know to take a page from Epicurus.

Or, take a page from Laplace, instead of either Johnson or Epicurus? I do, and I say of determinism that I have no need for that hypothesis. And, as an invocation of Ockham's Razor, at least in part, it's not a logical fallacy.

Beyond the quantum mechanics basics, there's the question, per Einstein's "the old one doesn't play dice," as to whether Heisenberg's Uncertainty Theorum is something that's merely a human limit, or an actual graininess of the universe. Einstein certainly saw it as the latter, as do most modern interpretations of QM, whether they invoke Schrödingerian "collapses of eigenstates" or not. (He smoked too much Gita and his cat stacks the deck. See here.)

Even if just a human limitation, it is such. We can't "measure in" a precision in actions in the world to say "Voila, determinism!" 

So, unless Massimo and other philosophers supporting determinism can top Einstein and offer up the philosophy version of a GUT? No, again, determinism doesn't work. And, remember, if you're a methodological materialist, a scientific naturalist, you can't pluck H. sapiens out of the rest of the world. If determinism fails somewhere else, it fails for human volition. 

And beyond THAT, Massimo himself seemingly fails to square the circle, within his neo-Stoicism, in this Big Think piece, referring back to Epictetus: 

In a sense, Epictetus is saying that only one thing is truly up to us: our deliberate, conscious judgments. If you think about it, our intentions to act or not are the result of our preliminary judgments about things, and our values and disvalues are also forms of judgments.

If they're in my control, and if they're "up to me," the individual version of "up to us," then they're not determined. And, if Massimo, or someone else, claims that my control is itself determined, and therefore actually an illusion? At that point, we're at a determinism equivalent of why Aristotle's prime mover or first cause argument for the existence of a god falls apart, or so I see it.

A few other points.

First, as I said in my initial shorter callout of Little Bobby Sapolsky, this is not a dichotomy. The lack of conscious free will (which is not what I am claiming, anyway, nor defending against, either) does not by default imply determinism. I think Massimo is better than that. I am charitably assuming he is.

Second, per my 10,000 word detailed callout of Sapolsky, I am sure that Massimo is not committing a category mistake. Sapolsky did, in the detailed, precise philosophical sense. His real issue was ethics, and what's really discussing is moral realism, not determinism, in much of his book. That said, per the snarky header, I chose to kill Little Bobby.

Third, the exact moment of willing action X is fleeting. No doubt about it. It's as fleeting as Hume's famous attempts to apprehend his self, noted here:

For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself that is, when I introspectively reflect on what’s present to my mind, I always stumble upon some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. ... If any one, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a different notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer with him. All I can allow him is, that he may be in the right as well as I, and that we are essentially different in this particular.

And, do you reject the idea of selfhood, of consciousness, just because you can't pin it down? No, no more than you reject the existence of a quark for that reason, to tie this back to the quantum world. And, so, because a moment of willing can not be tied down, whether or not we actually act before we decide to act, per Libet, also referenced in the link above, doesn't mean that the whole idea should be rejected. (Per that link, I don't see the Libet experiments as supporting determinism.)

To claim that IS the case is to be in the nutbar world of Alex Rosenberg, whom I know Massimo has, or has had, little use for. Maybe that's changed, though; maybe he thinks Hume's bundle theory supports determinism. 

Hume's bundle theory may not be totally right, but it's certainly not all wet.  

Two more notes.

One, per the end of this piece? Even if current conceptions of free will are not right, that does NOT mean that determinism is the default option. 

Second, riffing on me saying "mu," time after time after time, to the old issue, the old chestnut, of "free will VERSUS determinism," if we think in terms of gradations, we avoid polarities. 

Revisiting the "god-fearers" of early Christianity

An excellent piece by Thomas A. Robinson at the University of Arizona's Biblical Interpretation website, an underutilized source for biblical criticism.

Thesis is stated right at the top:

The widely accepted “god-fearer” thesis rests on weak foundations: the ancient terms are not clear technical labels, the evidence is sparse and often overstretched, and the model relies too heavily on assumptions about synagogue-associated Gentiles supposedly primed for Christian conversion. Early Christianity did not require a large class of literate, well-connected god-fearers to explain its growth, and this thesis has significantly shaped, and likely distorted, modern reconstructions of the movement’s origins, membership, and leadership.

Followed by five main points, all apparently taken from a book he wrote on the subject last year. 

The first point delves deeper into the "labeling" issue, looking at the two most common terms, and how and where in Greek they were used in the Septuagint. He concludes that by noting, while "god-fearer" is technically correct, whether as a dynamic translation we should even use that.

Second point? He says there's little evidence of the phenomenon from Jewish, Christian or pagan literature.

Third? He references the "Christianizing" of the Septuagint — including an overreading of how much, vs how little, Paul directly uses it, as a veil of sorts (my idea, riffing on Paul talking about the veil of Moses and analogizing from it) over clearer understanding of the LXX on this issue. He notes that the vast majority of the population was illiterate and so had no familiarity with it anyway.

Fourth point plays off the third and gets directly to Jewish vs Christian interpretations of the phenomenon, and larger Christian vs Jewish differences. He says, or indicated, there's a lot of assumptions at work here that have little standing. One is that Christianity would have been perceived as the only option for any actual god-fearers when a Christian preacher showed up. Another is whether, or not, circumcision was a real hurdle. Third is that conversion to a tiny cult would likely have been offset by a loss of Jewish friendships.

Fifth is the question of how long any significant body of god-fearers were around as a potential tool of converts.

Finally, his conclusion starts with this:

Almost every detail of popular and scholarly reconstructions of early Christianity is affected by the god-fearer thesis, from an emphasis on the economic, social, and intellectual resources of its membership and leadership, to its urban (and urbane) character, and its Jewish-tutored background. Such focus on god-fearers as a vital component in the early Christian movement tends to overlook how flimsy the evidence for god-fearers is and how unnecessary the god-fearers are to the developing Christian movement.

Give the whole thing a read. It's worth it.

Assuming he's right, this means that large swathes of Christianity would have been of a fully Hellenized, or Hellenized/Syriacized (sic) nature by no later than, say, the time of Marcion if not a full generation earlier, without "godfearer" intermediaries. OR, it means, given that we have moved well beyond Josephus on varieties of Judaism, that even more of Christian metaphysic than we have thought has Jewish roots. This, in turn, has implications for Christian development of Christology and related matters. 

 

 

Neil Godfrey calls out Richard Carrier over Bayesianism

VERY interesting. Godfrey, surely known to some of my readers as the proprietor at Vridar, says that using Bayesian probability is a sort of violation of Ockham's Razor: It's simply an unnecessary add-on in dealing with the historical Jesus. 

Here's his nutgraf, or the main sentence within:

One can validly use Bayes to judge between competing hypotheses that seek to explain President Kennedy’s assassination, but one does not need Bayes to determine if there was a historical President Kennedy in the first place. There are much simpler ways to check that datum

Well put, especially as someone here, me, who rejects JFK assassination conspiracy theories. 

But, he doesn't stop there. This:

Carrier approaches history the way positivists used to do in the olden days, approaching it like an empirical science that differs only from other sciences insofar as it has comparatively less data to work with.

Is at least halfway spot on, the positivism angle.

Then? 

Followed by a cite from this Aviezar Tucker critique of Carrier:

Historical sciences use evidence to support hypotheses about historical events such as the Big Bang, the origins of the solar system, asteroids hitting the earth, the evolution and disappearance of species, and who committed a crime. Historical sciences rely more on observations than on experiments and infer particularities more than generalities. In Carrier’s view, science and the historical sciences are not identical but are continuous and mutually dependent with a quantitative difference: in his opinion, historiography has less data and so is less reliable.

Is where the rubber really hits the road. 

I forgot how fucking stupid Raphael Lataster is

And mendacious, too.

Other than thinking Richard Carrier is genius-level mythicism, he thinks the same, in this piece, of Earl Doherty.

I've dealt with Doherty before, starting with his attempt to explain away Galatians 4:4 and claim Paul didn't believe in an earthly Jesus. (Unfortunately, the site I linked to is dead.) 

Lataster repeats the same lie on page 18:

Not only is Paul an obviously unreliable historian, he says nothing of a Historical Jesus, at least not anything that could not also apply to the ‘originally celestial’ Jesus proposed by amateur mythicist Earl Doherty.

How does he deal with Galatians 4:4? Doesn't even mention it. 

It's called mendaciousness, and mythicists are good at it. 

The piece is otherwise strawmanning, with Bart Ehrman — who gets strawmanned by mythicists in general — and Maurice Casey presented as the only two traditional critical scholars. 

Lataster himself has even less in the way of relevant education than Doherty.  

Top blogging, first quarter of 2026

As is usual, these were the most read posts of the last three months, per Google stats. Many may be older than that, and the "evergreen" ones will be so noted.

No. 10? "A Lutheran college myth bites the dust" from 2023 connects to my alma mater, a small college within the conservative wing of Lutheranism, and an urban legend (or worse) from my days that kept making the rounds for many years, claiming that Paul Hill wrote or helped write Bill Withers' "Lean on Me."  

No. 9? From 2023, talking about fascism in that same denomination, the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, punningly called Lutefash. It will never go away as long as its current president, Matthew Harrison, continues to play footsie with the current president of Merikkka, Donald Trump, all while also lying about certain classes of people (Sixth Commandment), violating various cherished Lutheran principles about the "two kingdoms" and more. As long as both Harrison and Trump are in office, this piece will surely stay evergreen. It's my currently pinned post, too.

No. 8 is from 2012 and rightfully is trending at Easter time. It's my refudiation of a nutter geologist's claims to have proven Jesus' resurrection date (setting aside that while there was surely a crucifixion, there was no resurrection). 

No. 7, from 2013, is my list of overrated and underrated philosophers. 

No. 6, from 2009, sometimes pinned, but perhaps also trending because it talks about Passover and other things, is one of my personal favorites: "Paul, Passover, Jesus, Gnosticism." 

No. 5, even older, from 2007, was a mini-post about "Patriots, gurus, scoundrels and martyrs." 

No. 4, related to No. 9, is from the last three months. Matt Harrison faces a real problem with a district president arrested on a child porn charge. Given the Lutefash angle, he'll have some wingnuts claiming this was a police sting, and others claiming there's a Comet Pong Pizza secret child porn dungeon inside LCMS headquarters, the so-called "Purple Palace," I have little doubt. 

No. 3: My piece about how Edith Hamilton mistranslated one word in Aeschylus famous saying, and then, how Robert F. Kennedy misquoted her deliberately incorrect translation, talked about how this bowdlerized a thought already bad on the issue of theodicy within classical polytheism and made it even worse within Christian monotheism, and how it also is another reason to question to legacies of both Hamilton and Kennedy. Going beyond the political and sociological angles, I noted how Aeschylus was seemingly writing about corporate, not individual, tragedy and guilt, an angle reflected in Judaism with the first of the ten divarim and Yahweh's inflicting punishment across multiple generations.

No. 2, also within the last quarter, was about the various stupidities of Tim O'Neill. 

No. 1 is a piece that may well remain within the top 10 for every quarter's roundup of top blogging that I put together. "More proof the Buddha was no Buddha." 

Coming up: One red heifer, without blemish or spot? (No, on either story or cows)

Per the old bible verse of Numbers 19:2, Texas Monthly reports on the efforts of rancher Jerome Urbanosky and businessman Byron Stinson to raise just such animals. (Another rancher, Ty Davenport, eventually has his ranch looped in by Stinson, too.)

Stinson is a Christian Zionist wingnut. Urbanosky raises Santa Gertrudis, which caught his eye. The story says Stinson also looked at Red Angus.

The entire red heifer and purification water ceremony is in Numbers 19. Not all Christian Zionists, nor all religiously Orthodox Jewish Zionists, believe the red heifer is necessary to build a new Jewish temple, but many do. Ultra-Orthodox Jews are generally non-Zionist to outrightly anti-Zionist; their stances on temple rebuilding in general as well as the need for a red heifer can vary. Within Christianity, amillennial Christians reject the entire temple rebuilding nuttery as being necessary to bring on the apocalypse. On paper, this is the official stance of Catholicism, Orthodoxy and all mainline Protestant churches. In reality, it's not so clearcut among the laity. Outside of this, postmillennialists also generally reject this.

Shockingly, the Monthly gets several things wrong.

First, technically, it's to enter the tabernacle, not the temple. TM quotes Numbers 19 as saying "temple"; it does not.

Second, as with much of Numbers, there's no indication on how much this was ideal and aspirational vs being real, per Yonathan Adler's book.

Third, it was for general purification as much as anything. 

Fourth, there's no indication in either the Tanakh or the New Testament that it was specifically necessary for temple rebuilding. (The Monthly does note that Orthodox Judaism sees a temple already ready to come down from heaven; see also Revelation.)

Yitshak Mamo, Stinson's partner, is an ultra-Zionist Israel settler colonialist nutter. 

Related to that, the Monthly does tell you this:

Urbanosky told me he knew “doodley-squat” about the significance of a perfect red heifer. “You’re Christian, and they’re Jews,” Urbanosky said to Stinson. “So when the Temple gets built, who’s coming back, Jesus or the Jewish messiah?”

There you go. Millennialist Christian Zionist and Zionist Jews figure that, like other things, they'll fight it out after they kill the last Palestinian and finish making Eretz Israel Arab-rein. 

Cut to the chase: Five heifers eventually got sent to Israel in 2022. (The Monthly and other sites have reported on this before.) Hamas noticed and mentioned this in early 2024, after the start of the current intifada; and the Israeli rabbi who will have the last word on making the purity call says they're not.)

According to [Rabbi Joshua] Wander, Rabbi Azria Ariel, of the Temple Institute, is the world’s foremost authority on the red heifer and perhaps the only figure with the clout to compel the necessary consensus to move forward. Ariel wasn’t satisfied with the candidates. “At this moment, it is unclear whether we have in our possession in Israel a red heifer that is verifiably kosher and suited for the ceremony,” Ariel announced in March 2025. One of the five heifers had sprouted white hairs; another grew warts on the side of its neck.

There you are. Perhaps it's a stall tactic, too. 

It gets nuttier from there, with Stinson eventually finding some Israeli Jews, including an alleged priest raised for this moment, to do a practice red heifer ceremony. From there, Stinson goes MAHA with the ashes.

The author does note that the claims of Stinson and his ilk are rejected by mainstream scholars, but not until the last paragraph, and without any of the details I note. Never let a "good" story stand in the way of (or demote) the truth, Texas Monthly.

Bobby Kennedy, Edith Hamilton and Aeschylus — wrongness compounded

Bobby Kennedy's quotation of Aeschylus on the night of Martin Luther King Jr.'s death is probably one of his greatest known moments. It has flickered in and out of my mind through the years, and came to my starker attention recently. On the divine? It's bullshit, really, whether classical Greece's panoply or Aeschylus going henotheistic, on one hand, or Kennedy's Christian god on the other. 

Anyway, here it is:

"In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

First, per several sites, the Edith Hamilton translation is "despite," not "despair." Aeschylus is slightly less bullshitting than RFK with "despite." The original idea doubles down on "against our will." Bobby's sounds more poignant.

But, neither is true. In the Christian dual-omni god world of Bobby, this runs straight on into the problem of evil, Aeschylus' original or his misremembered version equally so. A god who can't teach wisdom outside of suicides or homicides is either less than omnipotent or less than omnibenevolent. If one wants to go Calvinist and call this part of double predestination, which RFK wouldn't, of course, that is only more hideous yet.

That said, of course, Hamilton herself mistranslated the last word. In Aeschylus, it's, to give the whole phrase, "the awful grace of the gods." 

On that, yes, the Olympians were capricious, and while Aeschylus is treating them (and the Fates and others as well, surely) as a group, they were individually capricious, battling each other, even.

For more on that, and other problems with Hamilton's translation, go here. I quote author Tara Wanda Milligan:

Even more than this, it is perhaps Hamilton’s reconstruction of Athenian tragedy, Americanized to focus on individual “poetically transmuted pain,” that appealed to Robert F. Kennedy. Hallett says that tragedy as conceived by Hamilton, a school headmistress with a master’s degree in classics but no further training, “focused intensely on individual suffering, democratic to the extent that it equalizes, and minimizes differences among, individuals who suffer and exult in their suffering.” A man of forty-two who had witnessed both his elder brothers die unexpectedly (Joe Jr. died while fighting in World War II), Kennedy needed solace and founded it in Hamilton’s writing. “Reading the Greeks was Jackie’s idea but something Bobby was ready for,” writes biographer Evan Thomas, adding that Aeschylus’s words “seemed to be speaking directly to Bobby.”

Going past that, the author notes that Hamilton misconstrues Hellenic Greek tragedy in general. Indeed, the Americanization is tragedy as individualized pathos.  

While that's not "the problem of evil," per se, and it's not "theodicy," it is A problem of evil of sorts.

Go back to World War II, where African-American combat deaths, or service short of death, received less valourous recognition than that of Whites. Or look at "Drunken" Ira Hayes. 

That then said, going beyond Milligan, Aeschylus appears to be talking about what is at the heart of Greek tragedy: hubris. The "despite" plus "against our will" is basically about stiff-necked humans getting taught a divine lesson through pain and tragedy.

Of course, that ties back to something like the book of Job, where Yahweh eventually says, in essence: "I'm the boss and you're not. Shut up and stop second-guessing me." 

Often, though, it goes beyond that to something deeper. 

I mean, this is the heart of many multigenerational, familial Greek legends such as the fall of the house of Atreus, tainted, tainted, tainted. (And, none of that is worse than what you'll find in portions of Genesis and Judges.) Usually, this hubris is about offending the gods, violating divinely-backed social or cultural precepts and so forth. In many cases, it's compounded when one precept collides with another, or a precept collides with humaneness.

In this case, it's how original familial sin, slightly parallel to original sin of Augustine, or more parallel to the "third and fourth generation" of the Ten Divarim, puts people in "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations. 

In other words, from a secularist point of view, Aeschylus is still wrong, but not in the way Edith Hamilton and Robert F. Kennedy make him to be. 

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and Matt Harrison have big-ass shit on their hands

 Rev. Michael William Mohr, president of the Central Illinois District of the denomination, was arrested last month on a child porn charge. Details of the allegations behind the original charge indicate a wanton, ongoing problem.

More here, on the DOJ's news release. I quote this part in backup of the original: 

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Department of Justice Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims.

LCMS President Matthew Harrison whipped out the old "rule of law," in the "innocent until proven guilty" division, in his response. 

Gee, let's just sound like the Vatican and its various dioceses and archdioceses.  Or people who allegedly originally investigated Jeffrey Epstein.

I note this at the end:

Updated on Jan. 30, 2026, at the request of authorities.

Oh, that looks good. You're so anti-proactive the cops have to tell you? 

The stupidities of Tim O'Neill

 Regular readers here know I love bagging on "History for Atheists" blogger O'Neill, especially his handwaving lies about how Catholic in general, and papal in particular, antisemitism didn't exist in post-Renaissance times, despite David Kertzer repeatedly showing him wrong. (O'Neill, last time I checked his site, had never read a single book by Kertzer and only mentioned his name once or twice.)

Well, I decided to look at some of his Goodreads reviews and bag on him more.

Bart Ehrman's "The Triumph of Christianity"? He calls it five stars, ignoring the many errors, many of them out of historical ignorance, that actually make it two stars. 

"The Bright Ages"? O'Neill thinks that this one-star dreck, with various amounts of strawmanning, cherry-picking, lies by omission and historical inaccuracies, is worth four stars. I've long considered O'Neill to belong to the "Catholicist" subset of Samuel Huntington type cultural Christianism, and I think that's why he rates this dreck that high. 

And, due to a response to me elsewhere? On Twitter, he thinks Kertzer "has an agenda." On one other Tweet, he comes close to dipping his toes in something that isn't anti-Zionism but ... 

==

His wrongness isn't limited to theology and religion, though. He gives the David Graeber/David Wengrow "The Dawn of Everything" five stars, when, from the title itself onward, it's only two.  

Top blogging of 2025 on religion, critical thinking and more

 Again, as with my quarterly posts, not all of these were from 2025, but they were the 10 most read in 2025.

I'll note "evergreen" posts by when they were first written.

No. 10? From last spring, I offered up "ethical and pontifical thoughts on the death of Pope Francis." 

No. 9? From 2023, based on the work of up and coming Tanakh scholar Idan Dershowitz, namely an advance monograph proposing a proto-Deuteronomy, and that this was what Moses Wilhelm Shapira found, and religion researcher friend Paul Davidson speculating on who Josiah really was, I stood traditional ideas of both Josiah and Deuteronomy on their heads. 

No. 8? Way back in 2012, I laughed at a paleogeologist who claimed he had proven via geology that Jesus was crucified on April 3, 33 CE. 

No. 7? Even older, but it continues to trend because I continue to share it. "Paul, Passover, Jesus, Gnosticism" ties those four items together in a bow, starting with biblical criticism of the "Words of Institution" of the Eucharist in I Corinthians 15.

No. 6? From 2020, "A Lutheran College Myth Bites the Dust." (The college in question was my undergraduate alma mater.) 

No. 5? The oldest yet, from 2005. "Genesis 6 Retold" engages in a skeptical poetic retelling of the story of the Nephilim, Ham's would-be castration of Noah (yes) and more. 

No. 4? From 2023, yes, there is fascism of a sort, punningly labeled by others as "Lutefash," in the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, the largest denomination in the conservative wing of Lutheranism and my childhood religious alma mater. Although Matthew Harrison, the then and now president of the denomination, pruned the visibly worst flowers, he deliberately left the roots untouched, and since Trump's re-election and definitely since the killing of Charlie Kirk, has fertilized the soil for some version of this to arise again. Here's my take. (Rachel Good, killed by ICE in Minneapolis, was reportedly a member of an LCMS church, and at least semi-active. Yes, even with a lesbian wife.)

No. 3? "The great ahistoricity of Acts and radical thoughts on Paul's demise" is from 2022. The "great" ahistoricity, beyond Acts' relative ahistoricity in general, picks up steam with Acts 21, when Paul allegedly hauled a goy into inner courts of the Jerusalem temple. I thoroughly deconstruct that and everything that follows, while at the same time wondering if maybe he DID haul Trophimus or some other Gentile into the temple inner courts.

No. 2? "Ezra, Meet Snopes" also goes back to 2005. It offers brief overview-level speculation on how Ezra might have edited the Torah together. 

No. 1? From 2007, "More proof the Buddha was no Buddha" is one of my top posts all time on the site, and a direct rebuke to Robert Wright, and even more to those who think even less critically about Buddhism than him. 

We're not teaching Plato at Texas A&M

Plato is off the philosophy course list for one class, at least, at Texas A&M because he somehow might say something anti-wingnut about race or gender:

Professor Martin Peterson submitted his syllabus for PHIL 111, Contemporary Moral Issues, for review Dec. 22. On Tuesday, his department head told him he had two options: remove the modules on race ideology and gender ideology, including readings from Plato, or be reassigned to teach a noncore philosophy course. The email, obtained by the Tribune, gave Peterson until the close of business Wednesday to decide. Peterson responded that he would revise the syllabus, saying he plans to replace the Plato readings with lectures on free speech and academic freedom.

Then, A&M regents came up with this spin:

In a statement to the Tribune, A&M said the decision did not amount to a ban on teaching Plato and that other sections of the same course that include Plato – but do not include modules on race and gender ideology – had been approved.

Sure now. 

As many may recognize, per Literary Hub, "The Symposium," with its multiple sexes (not genders, LitHub, see Wikipedia) as far of its human origin story is the trouble spot. Its relatively open celebration of pederasty is also surely an issue.  

Top posts, 3rd quarter of 2025

 Similar to my main site, but on a quarterly not monthly basis, once again, here's a roundup of the most-read items of the last three months of 2025. Not all are FROM that time period; "evergreen" items will be marked.

No 10: Did Leon Festinger commit some sort of research fraud? It looks that way. While this won't demolish the idea of cognitive dissonance, it certainly leaves some of its stronger claims on weaker ground. 

No. 9 was my snarking on Bart Ehrman's retirement announcement; the retirement lecture referenced there is here, talking about "our flawed manuscripts."

No. 8? My brief, and latest, callout of r/AcademicBiblical moronity, focused on James McGrath.

No. 7? From 2022, my in-depth discussion of the great ahistoricity of the book of Acts.

No. 6 is my discussion of my Goodreads review system. 

No. 5 is definitely evergreen, from 2009: "Paul, Passover, Jesus, Gnosticism." 

No. 4? Did Josephus actually write the Testimonium Flavianum? Contra a crudely apologetic book, he most certainly did not; in fact, the author's effort backfired. 

No. 3 was my callout of Massimo Pigliucci both for his top 10 existential questions and his use of AI to help formulate them. 

No. 2, from way back in 2007: "More proof the Buddha was no Buddha." 

No 1, I wrote about the non-immigration portions of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' November statement, and how it reflects convergence of lay Catholics and lay Protestants along religious lines.

The Nones are still not reviving

 Friendly Atheist Hemant Mehta takes a look at new Pew et al data on where the Nones are at.

 Beyond the reasons why, most of which are obviously, one demographic issue, which should also be obvious, is of note.

People leave organized religion (or move from one to another, too) for the most part before age 30. So, if Catholics or Protestants are losing the early adult young, either due to active decision or passive drift, if they don't get them back soon, they never will.

In other words, as Merikkka moves more and more to a non-White majority (it already is natally), it moves if somewhat more slowly to a smaller Christian majority. Most the rest change in the 30-49 age range.

But, beyond most the obvious ones?

Churches are losing people because of increased politicization. And, of course, we're NOT talking about "librul" mainline Protestants. Will the winger churches, especially the ones, whether denominational or independent megachurches, who are not just winger but full MAGA, listen? Probably not. Rather, if anything, they'll circle the wagons.

And, per an earlier piece, Charlie Kirk's martyrdom (sic), semi-officially by many of those wingnut Protestants including the LCMS wingnut Lutherans of my birth, but NOT Rome, has NOT spurred, at least in the few months since, any great revival. 

The Second Great Awakening, and even more, social Christianity of the early 20th century, actually offered something to working-class Americans. The modern success gospel preached by conservative evangelicals, especially outside denominational structures? No.

I don't think the current "holding steady" will pick up massive Nones steam for another decade. After that? Possibly moderate Nones steam for mild growth. By 2050, the US may be where western Europe was in 1950.

The stability is probably due to older Boomers and what's left of pre-Boomers turning back to religion in their later years, especially if they have health problems and even more, psychological turmoil. But, since younger generations are less and less religious in the first place, that will happen less and less in the future. Also, COVID was a one-off mini-bump for organized religion. 

Ignoring the possible roots of Hanukkah, throwing secularists under the bus

Shock me that the "pergressuve" Texas Observer would do this, but it gave TCU prof David Brockman the space to do exactly that.

At the Observer, Brockman talks about how the religious of Texas can take comfort in "sparks of light" to battle the current political darkness.

With Judaism,  he ignores that Jews of Maccabean times got lucky (and weren't all that up to that point, as Yonathan Adler attests on purity, on festivals and Sabbaths, and more, including the actual targets of Antiochus Epiphanes), and also ignores the likelihood that Hanukkah came from the Persian, Zoroastrian, Yalda Night, also known as Chelle Night. Both former Iranian Jews and Syriac Christians (shades of Saturnalia?) have dipped into it, and we of course know the many other Achaemenid influences on emerging proto-Judaism. We don't know if it was first celebrated for eight days; that was derived from Sukkot. The story is from the "deuterocanonical" 1 and 2 Maccabees; the "miracle of the oil," which was seven days, not eight, is pure myth and comes from the Talmud, several centuries later.

Beyond that, there's good evidence Hanukkah was originally a winter solstice festival. 

Diwali? Not even a winter festival. Brockman is kissing the butt of vague religious pluralism. Also, Sikhs and Jains observe it, not just Hindus.

With a purely lunar calendar, Muslims don't have a solstice event. And, since he also kisses the butt of the Neoplatonist/Gnostic Kabbalah, one wonders if Brockman is a Zionist.

As for this:

One need not subscribe to any religion to recognize and draw strength from this insight. The idea for this essay came to me during a visit this fall to Houston’s Rothko Chapel, which transcends religious boundaries and embraces people of all religions and none. Avowedly multifaith and ecumenical, it stands in stubborn protest against the divisiveness and hatred metastasizing across our nation.

Multifaith and ecumenical is not secularist. Besides, I can get insight about the daylight portion of days lengthening again while hiking and birding.

Finally, a reminder that Laplace is "the reason for the season."