moving …

catch my future ramblings here:

The Quixotic Infidel

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musing on the historical Kaldi …

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It was in a cute little local coffee shop in Atlanta that I first heard of the legend of Kaldi and his dancing goats. I was standing in line waiting for the very pretty halfway-to-hippy barista girl to make my café americano —with a shot of caramel syrup.  A colorful display by the register told the legend of the origin of coffee with a stylized graphic of some goats dancing around Kaldi, a medieval Ethiopian goat herder.

The story: … 
… Kaldi started to notice that his goats were becoming rather excited and animated after grazing on the berries from a certain patch of bushes. His goats would "dance around." He had no idea why. On a hunch that he might be similarly affected, he tried the berries for himself. (Presumably, Kaldi fancied himself a dancer.)

Wowee! Those goats weren't kidding. What a rush!
After working in the fields, he stayed up the rest of that day and into the evening. Good thing that his wife was a heavy sleeper, because that night, he just could not sleep, so he did some stuff he had been meaning to do for a while. Might as well be useful, right? First he organized his sock drawer, then he fixed the squeaky gate hinge, then he weeded and pruned the front garden, then he wrote a three-act ballet.¹  All before sunrise(!)  
This flurry of activity was so out of the ordinary for Kaldi that it scared him. He decided to bring these curious berries to the attention of his local Imam, who indeed reinforced Kaldi's growing alarm. It was pretty clear that this state of being amped-up like this surely could not be a good thing. Could it? It must be an evil thing.  This would not do. So, by the power vested in him, the imam indignantly threw the rest of Kaldi's beans into the fire … where they would have turned to charcoal and ash, too, but for the peculiar aroma that soon began to emanate from their roasting. It was so distinctive, so delicately alluring to everyone present that they decided to rescue the beans from the flames. After thus salvaging them, they ground them up, dissolved them in hot water, and collectively enjoyed the first cup of joe.   … (How they decided on that particular method of preparation —roasting, grinding, steeping— we can only speculate about.)  
Now …
This is probably not a true story.

But whether the dancing goats are apocryphal or not, our culture now practically revolves around this substance we now call caffeine.

That makes Kaldi some kind of prophet of the present day world.








Can I get an amen?



(Trolls please be advised that the above is a joke.)

Ó

¹ Okay, okay … my recreation of the legend is a bit Dada. I'm obviously making shit up. Everybody knows that Ethiopians were not rightly introduced to the rich nuances of European ballet until much later, when Mussolini forcibly staged The Nutcracker in Addis Ababa on Haille Selassie's birthday. (Okay, you got me … I made that up too ;) … Isn't mythology fun? ) … Redaction in action, baby!
 :-)

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A review: The Devil You Know by Rickie Lee Jones

I  have been in love with Rickie Lee Jones since I was twelve.
It was summer.  I was a "fresh-off-the-boat" jíbaro immigrant kid lost in New York City. For some reason that I can't recall (I reckon my mom must have had an interview or a meeting or something), I was under the care and charge of one of my uncles that day. Tio Maelo's idea of babysitting was to take me along with him to one of his favorite pool halls in Spanish Harlem. It was still early afternoon, so when we got there, the place was empty except for a handful of barflies, his friends.  Maelo handed me a roll of quarters and left me alone to play pool on one of the tables in the place while he drank and cavorted with his friends, talking about whatever it is that Puerto Rican drinking buddies talked about back then. Probably  women and boxing, is my guess. 

Near the pool table, facing it, there was an enormous jukebox, one of those old ones that played 45 RPM singles. This was the perfect way to drown out all the Boricua bravado and drinking coming from the direction of the bar.   I was a twelve year old kid with a pool table, a jukebox, and a roll of quarters at my disposal.  I was in heaven.  I got to it.  I'd always loved music and jukeboxes, something happened that day to my not-yet-adolescent brain. I don't recall how many songs I had listened to before I finally stumbled onto a Rickie Lee Jones record that day, but once I did, I just kept playing that one 45, over and over again, for the rest of the afternoon (the a-side was "Chuck E's in Love"/ the b-side was "Danny's All Star Joint"), while I played long solitaire games of billiards one after the other. For some reason, the sound and general texture of her voice drew me in, moved me enough to experience her music in a way that was deeper than had been my experience with the pop and Latin musics that I had grown up with and was used to hearing before then. I was entranced. There was something about her music that compelled me to alternate between those two songs again and again. I have no idea all these years later what other songs might have been in that jukebox that day, but I onlt remember two..  Tio Maelo had little to do with my epiphany, other than providing me with the quarters I needed. I never quite developed any kind of close relationship with that particular uncle, he was not really a central figure in my life before that or since.  Thinking back, I probably drove those guys in that bar crazy that day, playing those two songs repeatedly. Oh well. No one complained, so I guess they didn't find it too disagreeable.
So, it was completely serendipitous that I should connect with a work of art as intensely as I did at that age. If it weren't for this musical moment, I probably would have no memory at all of that particular afternoon.   Funny how one seemingly random moment in time can affect a whole lifetime's course, though. 

I see that day as one of the milestones which would eventually inspire me to become a musician. There was something bold and sublime and dangerous in her phrasing that I took notice of. It caught me off guard.  It had qualities that I now appreciate in the great performers. Fearlessness. Recklessness. 

The music of Rickie Lee Jones, like that of other vital artists of their time, is resistant to easy categorization. Equal parts traditionalist and iconoclast, her recordings over the years span a wide gamut of styles and genres ranging from soft ballads to strident walls of sound.
Those who have followed her career know that Rickie Lee makes a couple of different kinds of albums.
When her muses and juices are overflowing, she often produces hauntingly lyrical albums with smart arrangements and meticulously crafted mixes of graceful color and style.  This type of record is gorgeous ( "Traffic From Paradise." "Evening of my Best Day."  ). It is the type of Rickie Lee Jones album that makes for lifelong fans.  When she decides to make tone poems that take advantage of sublime orchestration, she is truly one of the greats.

But Rickie also makes another kind of album now and then. The kind that features her interpretations of songs that are standards spanning the pop era. These records are not as lushly produced as are her original compositions generally, but they still provide a great view of her as interpreter and song stylist.

"The Devil You Know" is one of those records. It is basically a collection of cover tunes.

My biggest regret about this record is that it opens so disorientedly, with a lackluster rendition of Jagger's "Sympathy for the Devil."  The tune choice is not objectionable in itself. It's a good tune.  But while her other selections are given treatments in which the songs remain recognizable even through all the stylistic liberties taken in interpreting them, "Sympathy" sounds like a free improvisation, completely divorced from the original tune. It feels forced to me and it did not really grab me until five and a half minutes in, when she goes into a beautifully visceral falsetto motif vaguely echoing the original version's feel for a few gorgeous moments. But then it all just ends before anything more happens.  To be fair, in a recent interview, Rickie said that she "acts out" that song live, so maybe I am missing some theatrical cues that are lost in translation.

Despite this awkward opening track, however, the rest of the album actually has some lovely, unique, sometimes quite beautiful renditions of cover tunes, all done in Rickie Lee Jones' idiosyncratic, inimitable style.   She lends a tragic urgency to "St. James Infirmary", a song that is usually performed by jazz artists in a more showy, vaudevillian way. Rickie's take on it is desolate. Powerful.
The other Stones tune that she sings on this set ("Play With Fire") is haunting. There's no harpsichordy psychedelia in sight here. In her hands, the song is a stern defiant warning to a would-be adversary, not a pop song at al.
Loosely conceived and loosely executed, I suspect that this is an album that only die-hard fans of Rickie will really get.   "The Devil You Know" is a great addition to the collection of all Rickie lovers, but it is not the cohesive masterpiece that her fans know she is capable of producing. Decidedly unpolished, it won't appeal much to today's average music consumer, who has to be told what is good by committee, I'm afraid (American Idol, anyone?).
 I truly hope, for all of our sakes, that Rickie still has at least one or two more masterpieces left in her, because her best work hits hard.  She's a badass.  She really is that amazing of an American artist.    One of the greatest.  Anyone who knows, knows. Anyone who doesn't know, will not be convinced by this record, however. 

★  ★  ★  ☆  ☆  (3 of 5 stars)


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Parahistory and the historical Jesus (a laughing matter?) …

Shingo, Aomori

Deep in the mountainous northern countryside of Japan’s main island of Honshu, in the agricultural prefecture of Aomori, some 300 miles (a good day’s travel) from the metropolis of Tokyo, one will find the village of Shingo (called Herai in former times) nestled unobtrusively in the landscape. This simple village of about 6,000 people is in a remote region which is virtually inaccessible in winter. A few farmhouses are scattered among some terraced rice paddies and apple orchards. Basically, it is your typical rural Japanese village. There’s nothing out of place about the place—nothing, that is, until you begin noticing all the crosses everywhere. Crosses lead a kind of yellow brick road path into the center of town, becoming progressively more numerous as you approach: on street signs, on the façade of the general store, on the uniforms of its few municipal employees. They finally converge on a building of modest size which serves at the town’s official museum. Boasting over 10,000 visitors annually, the museum at Shingo was erected to commemorate one specific piece of local mythology, a legend that is quite extraordinary for such a small rural Japanese village.

You see, Shingo, Aomori, according to local tradition, is the final resting place of Jesus.

Yes, that’s right, the Jesus— Jesus of Nazareth, the famous first-century healer, magician and teacher from the Levant, the very cornerstone figure in the religious development of Western civilization of the last two thousand years. His body is said to lie in a burial mound down the road from this museum a ways, on a charming nearby hill.

A large white cross marks the spot.

Before continuing, I have to stop to ask the reader: Is this your first time hearing this?
If so, what is your initial reaction to this proposition?

My first reaction was to think that this is some kind of joke.

But it isn’t a joke. It’s for real. They’re not kidding. The locals claim Jesus is buried there. There’s even a tourist industry devoted to the perpetuation of this peculiar legend. Officially sanctioned by the town and celebrated annually with a festival that features music, poetry, and dance, the Christ Festival (Kirisuto Matsuri), as it is known, is a significant source of revenue. The locals therefore take it very seriously. They get into it. They look forward to participating every first Sunday in June. But this notion of Jesus having been in Japan is such a strange concept to us westerners, it is so far removed from his legend’s traditional cultural and historical context in first-century Judea, that we can’t help but to find humor in its mere suggestion. We are therefore tempted to reflexively dismiss the whole thing out of hand as a ludicrous proposition.

Why on earth would someone think that Jesus is buried in the land of the rising sun?

A tourist brochure from the museum relates a bit of this strange tale for the curious visitor:

“When Jesus Christ (イエスキリスト) was 21 years old, he came to Japan and pursued knowledge of divinity for 12 years. He went back to Judea at the age of 33 and engaged in his mission. However, at that time, people in Judea would not accept Christ’s preaching. Instead, they arrested him and tried to crucify him on a cross. His younger brother Isukiri (イスキリ) casually took Christ’s place and ended his life on the cross.

Christ, who escaped the crucifixion, went through the ups and downs of travel, and again came to Japan. He settled right here in what is now called Herai village, and died at the age of 106.

In this holy ground, there is dedicated a burial mound on the right to deify Christ, and a grave on the left to deify Isukiri.

The above description was given in a testament by Jesus Christ.”

So Jesus went to Japan and he wrote about it …
 How about that? Who knew?

I grew up in the west, where the story of Jesus is canonical, culturally pervasive, deeply ingrained, so I find this notion to be humorous, a bit surreal, and even ludicrous.

Why?

Why is it that we react with such a high level of suspicion when we hear things like this? Is there some threshold of ludicrousness, beyond which a variant of a story becomes absurd enough to be considered laughable? Where is this threshold? Is mockery or vitriol justified beyond this threshold? What are the social and mythological parameters at play in making these determinations.

The answer ultimately lies, as it does for all historical claims, in following up on whatever evidence there is to support them. Of course, one can simply dismiss the thing altogether as folly without further ado, betting that its probability is so low as to be negligible. It's the prerogative of the individual. But without due diligence, this kind of dismissive mockery is based more on social pressures than on intellectual ones, and it is very important that we make the distinction. More than that, what if it could be demonstrated that Jesus died in Japan and is still buried there? Don’t you want to know why someone would say such a thing? An outright dismissal is more an emotional response than a rational one. One would at least ask to see evidence. We have to ask: Is there any verisimilitude to this legend? Some people think there is. As we explore the story, in fact, it turns out that the heart of this legend is convoluted and as full of moxy, fantasy, and intrigue as a Dan Brown novel.

In 1935, while researching his family’s library in the prefecture of Ibaraki (about 60 miles northeast of Tokyo), a man named Kyomaro Takeuchi claimed to have unearthed some very ancient documents which turn out to be the source of this peculiar, lesser-known variant of the Jesus legend. These documents included the Legend of Daitenku Taro Jurai (the Japanese name that Jesus would reportedly take on for himself). The legend revealed that Jesus first came to Japan during the reign of the eleventh emperor Suinin, landing at the port of Hashidate (on the western coast of Honshu), and that he eventually settled in the Etchu province, where he studied Japanese language, literature, and philosophy under a Shinto priest.

After this formative period of immersion into pre-classical Japanese culture, it is reported that Jesus returned to Judea. The New Testament tells us what happened next. The part where Jesus less-than-triumphantly marches into Jerusalem one Passover weekend to usher in the new Davidic age, botches it up and then proceeds to get crucified in the process for all his trouble, is ingrained into our collective cultural frontal lobe. There’s no need to revisit the details of the familiar story. But the Takeuchi documents have a different, happier ending than the New Testament does. They inform us that Jesus was in fact spared the undignified death outlined in the gospels. Cancel the passion. Cancel the resurrection. Cancel Pentecost. The ancient texts tell us that Isukiri, Jesus’ baby brother, voluntarily took his place and died instead.¹  Having thus escaped death by the hand of Rome Jesus hurried eastward, carrying with him his martyred brother’s ear and a lock of hair from their mother. After much hardship along the long way from Judea to Japan (via Siberia and Alaska—!!—, we are told) Jesus eventually made it home to Japan. The legend then holds that during this second visit, Jesus eventually settled down in Herai, married a woman named Miyuko, worked as a simple rice farmer, raised a couple of daughters, and later died there at an extremely advanced age. The Takeuchi documents further reveal the Sawaguchi family to be the direct descendants of Jesus of Nazareth.²

At the time of their “discovery”, these documents caused very little stir (most of it negative) in the Japanese press, who would have been understandably highly skeptical and hostile to such an interpolation of gaijin (alien/outsider) religious symbolism into pre-axis Imperial Japanese culture. Therefore, no one really took Takeuchi seriously.

But still there are those who even now perpetuate the legend, or else there would be no yearly festival. Right?
At the very least, we are justified in asking to see the original Takeuchi documents.The response to which (I extrapolate in dialogue form from the literature at the museum) goes something like:

— ‘Well, the originals were so precious that they were transferred from Ibaraki to Tokyo, where they’d be safe, but they did not survive the subsequent constant bombing of Tokyo during the war, I’m afraid. They were destroyed.  But copies were made by the Takeuchi family, and can be read today; some are on display at the museum in downtown Shingo.’

— I see, … so the originals don’t exist any longer, only copies do, and the people claiming to have found the document are the people who did the copying.  (My spidey sense starts to go off and I start making mental notes.)
Hmm.
Anything else? What other evidence is there that this legend is based on anything real?  

It turns out that those few who take the authenticity of the Takeuchi documents seriously actually have a few lines of ‘evidence’ in support of their belief.

(Aha! Cool. Now we're talking. Evidence!)

The Evidence:

First, notice the similarity between the Sawaguchi family emblem and the familiar star of David, symbol of the Hebrews since ancient times.

¿

→

?

—Wait … That's your evidence?

You do realize that the star of David has six points, right? The Sawaguchi emblem has five points.  

Well, that's not all. There is also the evidence from some of the ancient songs that are traditionally (and still) sung at the festivals. There is a body of music which has been exclusively performed in this region for ages and ages. It is pretty evident that these songs go back to the time before Takeuchi made his infamous discovery. They are so ancient that they were sung eons before anyone ever heard of Jesus in Shingo. In fact they go way further back than the Japanese language itself. Their syllables have been handed down from generation to generation, faithfully taught phonetically even though no one remembers what they mean any longer.³  One scholar, Eiji Kawamorita, has argued that the lyrics of one such song could have come from some Hebraic source that has been babble-ized over time. In his ethnography of the songs of the region in 1935, he stated, "This is a military song of ancient Judea and it means to give glory to God in Hebrew."  An approximate pronunciation of this particular popular festival chant is:

Naniyaa dorayayo...................(ナニヤアドラヤヨ)
Naniyaa donasare inokie............(ナニヤアドナサレイノキエ)
Naniyaa dorayayo ..................(ナニヤアドラヤヨ)

(Some footage of the chant and the dance performed by the locals at Christ's burial mound at the 45th annual Kirisuto Matsuri.)

Offered up as evidence of Hebraic origin is the suggestion that, in the middle of the song is a string of syllables (nasare) which closely resembles the name "Nazareth." Moreover, the old name of the town, Herai,  is said to derive from the word for "Hebrew."

(My spidey sense is tingling like crazy at this point.)

— Hmm. I see. Yes, of course, and the "inokie" part clearly is a reference to Enoch. And obviously the "yayo" is an allusion to the Hebrew tetragrammaton ( יהוה‎ ).    (I find it hard to restrain my sarcasm here.
It really IS hard to not resort to mockery — but I digress).

Needless to say, presented with such flimsy scraps of circumstantial 'evidence,' it's hard to imagine that anyone is drawn in by it at all.  The first bit about the similarity between the Sawaguchi family emblem and the star of David, for example, is clearly just ad-hoc and forced from the git-go. I’d go as far as saying it’s silly.   

Dig a bit deeper into the folkloric chanting of that region, and you’ll learn that although Professor Kawamorita is cited as supporting the hypothesis that the songs are Hebraic in origin, others don't agree.  Dr. Kunyo Yanagida, for example, a premier Japanese ethnologist, has interpreted the words of that same song to translate as, "You must have nerve to express your heart." He thinks it was a love song in the local proto-Japanese accent of the region instead of a Jewish religious exultation.   How would Occam cut this knot?

 Dig deeper still and you’ll learn that Professor Kawamorita in fact rejected and detested the whole Christ burial business. He also clearly resented the fact that his work was being used to support the ideas of hyper-nationalistic Takeuchi. So annoyed was he at Takeuchi that he would (in his work Research on the Hebrew Song Words in Japan) eventually write about the whole affair:

“During the summer of 1935, when I set foot in Herai, the tomb of Christ did not exist yet [...] I have nothing in common with Kyomaro Takeuchi, who posed as an oracle and a remote descendant of Sukune Takeuchi  (武内宿禰), and his group, Katsutoki Sakai, Banzan Toya, history researcher Kikue Yamakawa etc. who created that "Christ's grave" fantasy in Herai, and I refuse to bear that responsibility.”

If this wasn't damning enough, after a few tourism inquiries into the region, one learns that the tomb of Jesus is not Shingo’s only popular tourist attraction; there are also some ancient (older than Giza, so the brochure reads) pyramids nearby. You can also find, a few kilometers from Jesus’ grave, the location of the Garden of Eden. Apparently, Shingo, Aomori is the Sedona, Arizona of Japan, a groovy place to titillate all manner of gullible mystic visionaries in their quest for is-ness and otherness and what-not.

This is not looking so good for the historicity of the story.

So what about these documents, then?  What, if anything, can we glean from them? What does a crritical review of them reveal?  The answer, I am afraid, amounts to nothing but good old human artifice and guile. In fact, if the circumstantial evidence above seems pretty thin, the textual evidence is even worse in several ways. It is blatantly fraudulent.

a copy of Jesus' signature

To begin with, the copies of the various Takeuchi documents on display at the Shingo museum are written in what are legible kenji, hiragana, and katakana characters — all of these are standard in the Japanese language.   But this is a big problem.  Why?  Well, this is a Japanese writing system that did not exist until the ninth century. What's more, the Japanese didn’t even have any writing system at all until the sixth century or so!  Whoever "copied" these documents has to explain why Jesus (the supposed writer of this scroll) was expressing himself in modern Japanese during the second century C.E.

The following excerpt from Japan: A Short Cultural History is a good encapsulation of the discontinuity involved:

Apart from Chinese chronicles, our chief sources of information about early Japanese history are two official records, the Kojiki ('Record of Ancient Things') and the Nihongi, or more correctly Nihon-shoki ('Chronicles of Japan'), compiled in 712 and 720 respectively, […] It must be repeated that both these records were compiled at a date when Japan had been for centuries under the influence of Chinese culture, and that they are both written in Chinese script—since the Japanese had no writing of their own.⁴ (my emphasis)

It is my understanding (indeed, it is explicitly stated in the museum literature) that the Takeuchi family had "copied" (not "translated") the documents before the originals were destroyed, so it follows that the originals were also written in this modern Japanese script.

But let's give the Takeuchis the benefit of the doubt, let's allow for the possibility that the original documents were in ancient Chinese and that the pertinent members of the family were qualified to translate them from this archaic form of Chinese script to modern Japanese; there are still problems within the text itself which are very hard to explain. Insurmountable hurdles, in fact.

A single glaring example will suffice to make my point. One of the pages of the document is signed,
イスキリスクリスマス神,
"Isukirisu, Christmas god."

Not only is this supposedly a testament written by Jesus himself, this is a Jesus who apparently thinks he’s Santa Claus. Clearly, this could only have been written by a modern Japanese person with a very limited, incomplete, and cursory understanding of Christian belief and ritual.  

It doesn't take a genius to deem the Takeuchi  documents a forgery.   At this point, I have enough evidence to make my own Bayesian estimate for the probability that this legend might be historically viable. Obviously, I don’t think there’s anything to it, which is to say that I think that Takeuchi invented the story in 1935 from whole cloth, just as I think that Joseph Smith’s having “discovered” the Book of Mormon means that he is its sole source and author.  

Having thus determined the legend to be completely fanciful and made up, I now return to the question with which I started: Namely, I am interested in the threshold of tolerance for any given false historiographical claim, trying to highlight the burden of evidence that is called for in establishing such a claim laughable or ridiculous (or merely impossible). Any one of quite a few similarly refutable claims would have served as examples: 
Jesus’ supposed sojourn to Kashmir as revealed in Nicolas Notovitch’s infamous “discovered” Issa document; 
… or Jesus’ supposed sojourn to England (with his uncle Joseph in tow?) as beautifully immortalized in William Blake’s verse:

“And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?”

Poetic as the notion may be, the answer to the questions posed by Blake is a resounding ‘no’ on both counts. It is, in fact, so highly unlikely that it is safe to say that it almost certainly never happened (we, of course, are never justified in saying “never”, but we are surely justified in making some bets regarding the matter). It is just as unlikely that Jesus went to England as it is that he went study with the swamis in the Himalayas or that he settled down in middle-of-nowhere Japan or that he visited the meso-Americans during his alleged three-day sojourn to the netherworld. These kinds of claims can be dismissed outright, based as they are on either fabricated evidence, or circumstantial non-evidence.  They can be dismissed regardless of how one relates to or interprets the historicity of traditions involving Christian origins in the early Roman Empire as outlined in the early Christian writings and various other related primary sources. One need not be a mythicist, in other words, to call 'bullshit' on them. There is simply no reason to think that these newer aberrant tales are in any way relevant to the quest of the historical Jesus.

It looks like an ad hoc solution to the problem of Jesus' missing years. But the problem of these missing years is not resolved by these absurd formulations of his various legendary journeys, for which only anecdotal evidence or completely fabricated evidence or totally discredited evidence has been retained. Anyone who would believe in any of these supposed travels of Jesus (or Issa, or Iesukirisuto) does so at the peril of the credibility of their own reasoning. That person would be taking a logical leap without any due warrant. These credulous people may have to pay a high social price for subscribing to such an unsubstantiated view. People who believe that Elvis is living in exile in Santa Monica (or in Paraguay) will inevitably get funny looks from their less-eccentric neighbors. That’s just the way life is.

I would suggest that there is valid reason to mock that which has been demonstrated to be a guileful ruse. Such mockery is well deserved. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the festival.  I don't mind Easter either, even though I seriously doubt its veracity too. I actually think that ritual is a good thing, necessary for human psychological balance and cultural identity. The metaphors and symbols within these rituals are the navigational aides by which people orient themselves to their values and ideals.   But as the higher criticism of the last two centuries have been repeatedly showing us, it is inadvisable and unwise to try to lend gravity to one's myths by insisting that they are historically supported facts.  The story of the Buddha's birth, in which he utters his first words: "Worlds above, worlds below, there's no one in the world like me" is a beautiful story, but to believe that a newborn baby actually spoke in a complete sentence with such eloquence is just plain silly. Likewise with Jesus. The New Testament if filled with much metaphorical beauty and mythological symbolism. It is a shame and an utter waste of energy to think that the stories are factual, that they happened exactly as reported there.  

If anyone wants to talk about Buddha stories or Jesus stories or Hohokam legends or Obatalá legends in their proper function, I am all over that. I love to interpret and discuss the beauty of these myths and how they relate to human living. Myths are among the most precious human artifacts, and as such, they deserve respect and admiration. But anyone who wants to obstinately insist on a myth's historicity, — well, I'm sorry, but I am going to think you are a dazed and confused person. I might even laugh at you if you get all smug and haughty in the defense of your delusion. 

That said, the reason why this question has been prompting me to think through all of this is that I detect a lot of undue mockery  being leveled at some scholars whose work is far from this contriving subterfuge that is clearly in evidence in the Shingo legend.

What about this Christ Myth idea that gets batted around? Is mythicism a crazy notion too? Do its proponents commit the same sort of disregard for evidential standards as those who would accept the Shingo-Jesus legend as authentic?

I don't intend to lay out a case for mythicsm.5  It is enough to say that, whether or not one accepts the arguments for it, it is obvious that they are not the same kind of arguments as the ludicrous one outlined above.  Therefore I find the invective directed at the mere mentioning of the idea that I witness in print and on the bloggosphere to be undeserved.   

The Christ myth theory is at the very least tenable precisely because it does not rely on the kind of whole-cloth fabrication  or misguided analogues that are the hallmark of fanciful parahistory like the examples above.  Given that the evidences outlined in defense of the Christ myth theory  are based on demonstrably solid scholarship (whether one agrees with the mythicist interpretations or not is not the point now) it is troubling to see scholars behaving so badly toward fellow scholars. This is something that I say as someone who has spent much time poring over the materials that call historicity into question, it’s not a call I make in haste. In fact, I confess that when I first encountered the idea, I argued against it forcefully. But the various formulations of the Christ myth of Hermann Detering, Earl Doherty, Robert Price and Richard Carrier are defensible and validly expressed, so the kneejerk tendency to dismiss them out of hand like I had previously diminished.  I think that Carrier’s forthcoming volume will probably be the most exhaustive and carefully argued one to come on the subject. We'll see.  I suspect that it won’t be so easy to swat the theory away with the derision that it has been dismissed by those who detest it once the historical problem has been properly defined and inductively outlined .  Until then, I'm sure that the silverback academics will keep hurling shit and sticks and stones up in the air, trying to dissuade others from entertaining the possibility. Mythicism is so reviled by these people, their hatred is so irrationally out of proportion to the implications resulting from the theory that I can't help but paraphrase the line from Hamlet:  "Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much." 

We'll have to grin and bear it for a while, I suppose. It's not easy to overturn the weight of two thousand years of enculturation, after all.  However, Jesus' aphorism concerning the futility of trying to keep a light hidden is a beautiful truth, no matter who said it.  Whether Jesus was a historical person or not, this is something in which I have faith.

Ó

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¹ The phonetic quality of written Japanese katakana highlights a curious relation between the names of the two brothers. The name of Jesus, イエスキリスト (= Iesukirisuto) contains the name of his brother  イスキリ (=Isukiri). It’s really a condensation of the first five characters of the former name to four (just omit the ‘e’=エ). Compositionally, this link between the names sets up a potential doppelganger motif to the tale. Note that the name Isukiri is a far cry from Jacob, Judas, Simon, or Joses, the names of Jesus’ brothers as listed in the Gospel of Mark.

² The Sawaguchi family curiously parallels the St. Clairs in the Dan Brown novel The DaVinci Code in this regard, except that they are not fictional characters, but actually existed in history (and still exist to this day).

³ This reminds me of the various Lucumí chants that are sung to the Orishas (in the Yoruba-derived syncretic religions of the Americas). No one really knows the meaning of the phrases, they are taught phonetically by a priest(ess) to a catecumen.

⁴ Japan: A Short Cultural History by G.B.Sansom, Stanford University Press, 1931 (1988 edition) pp. 20–21

⁵    Mythicism, for those who are unfamiliar with the subject, is the notion that the legend of Jesus might be just that, legendary, not based on a real historical personality, but instead on an essentially fictional character. For anyone who might be genuinely interested in listening to a pretty good introductory presentation of the mythicist case in three parts. The podcaster is Dr Zachary Moore, who also produced the excellent Evolution 101 podcast. 

1. the arguments from silence,
2. the arguments from similarity,
3. the arguments from ahistoricity.

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the arts as religion fades …

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Chola bronze — Dance of Shiva

A  friend recently suggested in a conversation that if it weren't for religion we wouldn't have the arts. After giving it some thought, I don't believe that's true at all.  I think religion's appetite for the arts did have some role in facilitating their progress in those societies in which Christianity took hold, but ultimately I believe art would still be in our lives with or without religion. Let's not forget that the relationship between religion and the arts is rather symbiotic, a two-way street. That is to say, without art, Christianity (here I will pick on Xstianity b/c my friend is Xstian) would be a lot harder to sell to the masses. Mere mystery is not enough without the accompanying visual and aural aides and symbols with which to navigate it. For the bulk of the Church's history (universal literacy is a fairly recent development) the people were forced to meditate on a story sung to them in a language which they probably didn't understand, through picture-book stained glass, painted, and sculpted images, depictions of key gospel passages, that were all around them in church while the well-rehearsed choir filled every nook and cranny in the place with a grandiose import that the congregants could get nowhere else. It's easy to forget that the overwhelming majority of people (certainly the lay people) had no way to ponder the mystery except through the sights and sounds of the liturgy. It was the only game in town. 

Yes, I think we can say that art springs from that intangible domain that we call the spiritual, the numinous, and I think we can say that the first songs were probably prayers, and I think we can even say that religion in this perennial,  metaphysical sense has always been reflected in art and will continue to be. 

The mystical beasts on the walls of the caves of Altamira are informed less by zoological or morphological concerns of their hunters than they are by the perceived interrelation they fancied they had with these phantastic creatures. Gods have always been great springboards for riffing. 

The thousands of altars strewn across the Mediterranean basin, all devoted to the pantheon of Greek deities attest to this human proclivity. Poseidon standing nine meters tall in bronze, trident in hand, poised to strike. Athena in armor.

When Constantine decreed the primacy of Christianity for the empire, the Church ran with this, blossomed, and eventually became a regal entity which gloried in highly adorned and elaborate artistic professions of faith, and would pay handsomely at times for them. They filled the temples with rows and rows of rococo excess. So artists followed the money to the great cathedrals and they painted there. The great ones fluorished.  You want John the Baptizer in furs? Sure! Saint Joseph with his lillied staff? Certainly!   The church was a godsend to art. Bach set his experience with his scriptures to a music so sublime that it will likely survive the ages of man.   (I could be wrong. :)   The high standard that Christianity inspired in the arts is undeniable. El Greco's reverence to this tradition is expressed wonderfully in the radiant elasticity of his religious figures.   And it's as if Rembrandt mixed light itself with his colors to achieve the transcendence in his. The influence of  the artist's devotion to the subject matter is undeniable in the great art of recent centuries. 

But people have become progressively less religious. This is also undeniable, and since the days of the Enlightenment, instead of doctrinal exhortations to submission to authority, it has been scientific discovery and technological advancement which more and more have become the determinants of our sense of social history and of the idioms appropriate to expressing that history. In an increasingly secular society, where we no longer have need of the god hypothesis (as La Place once called it), a hypothesis on which we once relied so heavily, the art produced reflects this rate of change.   

Once we dispensed with the sacred, what was once profane seems to have thrived. It was a gradual process. Almost innocuous at first. Leonardo's most iconic piece is not religious at all (and yet it 'passed'). Vermeer's mastery was religion-less as well. By the time that the impressionists opened the turn of the 20th century up to the open light, religion had all but fallen completely out of view in the visual arts, a field which it had once all but monopolized. It would never regain this primacy again. Art has abandoned the Church, never to return. What's more, the reactionary irreverence and boldness that are part and parcel of the artistic personality deepened, sometimes into explorations of form and composition, sometimes into a deliberate scorn. This has happened at an exponential rate, and now we find ourselves in an age where "Piss Christ" can be defended as genuine artistic expression. I see no end in the recent future for shock as a valued aesthetic component in art.  The postmorderns asked: Beauty? What's that? 

After such a severance, a progressively secular society will inevitably come up with its own existential concerns to depict and exploit. Some memes will be more useful than others and will multiply. And rightly so. It doesn't mean that people should just abandon hope and optimism and the mythical-artistic imagination. Just because people decide there's no god doesn't mean that they won't keep asking all those unanswerable questions that people as an altruistic social simian species seem to be wired to ask. 'Atheism' (a term I don't like much) can itself engender moral discipline and altruism and surely art as well.  Human exultation, anguish and jubilation, love and hatred, these don't end with the death of god, they will forever continue to demand shaped expression wherever human beings live together. That's just the way it is. What is different now is that this position inevitably imposes on the artist or the thinker a solitude more austere than previously realized. An added sense of futility. The storm which we sail under turns out to be windier than we previously thought; life is nasty, brutish, short, and only once, so people paint according to this new-found sense of desolation.  A high and advanced art is not precluded by this lessening bond between Church and an ambivalent congregation's lack of devotion, though. But the very function and definition of art have been completely redefined in the paradigm shift that has ensued since the church lost sole control of the arts.  Surely, despite the death of God in our history, there will be artists who will be energized by their own personal existential concerns into creating works to rival the dimensions, the transcendental strengths of those inspired by the Christian kerygma in the age which preceded this one.  At any rate, it would be impertinent to rule out the possibility of art in the coming secular age (an ironically neo-pagan one, but that's for another rant). Or to deny a fascination. 

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a Quixie review of a homeopath

The following is in response to a blog post on Chandran Nambiar’s blog devoted to homeopathy.
It was suggested that I read this blog post in order to have a better understanding of the theoretical aspects of homeopathy from a viewpoint other than “new age wackos.” Here goes …

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A metaphor that came to my mind while reading Chandran Nambiar’s apology for homeopathy is that of a Trojan Horse. The article begins as a call to modern homeopaths to amend the outmoded paradigm which relegates the active component of homeopathic treatments to the realm of the intangible and unexplained/unexplainable, and to take a more rigorous scientific approach to the discipline, so that it may be taken seriously and finally incorporated into general medical practice without the sarcasm and mockery which it is frequently subjected to from this establishment, both currently and in the past. This seems like a noble goal. As such, I found myself cheering him on in the first few paragraphs of the piece, where he chastises his fellow practitioners for the gaping lapses in the theoretical scientific formulations of the practice. In one of the opening paragraphs, he states:

Studies of homeopathic practice have been largely negative or inconclusive. No scientific basis for homeopathic principles has been substantiated”. For the last 250 years since its inception, homeopathic theoreticians were trying to explain the ‘modus operandi’ of potentized homeopathic medicines using one or other hypotheses available or evolved by them. They go on spinning diverse types of fanciful ‘theories’ using ‘ultra-scientific’ jargons, that make homeopathy a piece of unending mockery before the scientific community. Actually, nobody could so far even propose a scientifically viable ‘working hypothesis’ about homeopathy, that could be presented as a reasonable candidate for verifications according to scientific methods.

Like the proverbial Trojan horse, Nambiar’s article is impressive in magnitude, massive even (33,000 + words, in fact). It is without a doubt the most erudite (copious typos notwithstanding) and exhaustive attempt at a defense of homeopathy that I have read to date. But while it certainly is ambitious in its stated goal, instead of logical cogency, his arguments depend more on verisimilitude, and thus fall flat of being at all persuasive. In the end, his is nothing but a specious “fanciful theory” that is unsupported by research, using much “ultra-scientific jargon” in order to seem more “sciency” than the homeopathic theory of old. By the time one reaches the midpoint of the extremely long blog post, in fact, it is quite clear that Mr. Nambiar is no different from those whom he condemns in his introductory caveat. Nambiar’s Trojan horse purports to be a corrective measure against homeopathy’s intangible, mystical past, but it only succeeds in slipping in a few more layers of nonsense to its already over-burdened and tenuous “theory.” To his credit, though, I will say that at least he is aware of traditional homeopathy’s failings, and he is at least trying to address them by formulating a working hypothesis, which is more than can be said of any other homeopathic apologist that I have come across.

But his fundamentally apologetic tendencies are hard to conceal despite his posturing as a defender of science. A sentence like:

"Such a fundamental re-building shall obviously help in enthroning homeopathy on its rightful status of the most advanced branch of modern medical science, unfairly denied for more than last two hundred years."

betrays the ultimately ideological modus of his thinking. Or, try this sentence:

"We repeatedly hear about ‘successful” attempts by its opponents, to ‘disprove’ it ‘scientifically’, and time and again declaring it a ‘fraud, placebo, or pseudoscience’. In spite of all these scorns, ridicules and ‘witch hunts’, homeopathy still exists and thrives all over the continents, alleviating pain and sufferings of millions. The rising acceptance of homeopathy not only by the millions of lay public, but by the heads of states, members of royal families and many other dignitaries all over the world, has produced a state of dilemma in the world of medicine. Either all of these millions had fallen victims to a successful global scale ‘medical hoax’, or the ‘learned scientists’ striving to disprove homeopathy, are being proved themselves wrong."

Or …

"They miserably failed to comprehend the revolutionary content and epoch-making relevance of Hahnemann’s findings. "

Or …

"The principle of ‘Similia Similibus Curenter’ has sufficiently proved its ‘right of existence’ through thousands and thousands of miraculous cures by homeopaths all over the world."

Or …

"The sarcastic comments of our opponents that ‘homeo medicines act only as placebos’ may be dismissed as expressions of their arrogance resulting from ‘scientific ignorance’ regarding matters happening outside the dominion of their comprehension."

Not only are these the words of a man with a horse in the race, of an impassioned apologist, these are the words of a man who is obviously presuming that which he is supposedly trying to prove, namely, that homeopathy is a demonstrably efficient technique. (As a trained scientist—before I became a lowly musician, my formal education was in chemical engineering — I take some slight offense at that last sentence of his, by the way.)

So much for his being a detached and objective observer and champion of science.

Anyway, after summarizing the fundamental axioms of homeopathic practice that we all have heard before he eventually gets to making his main point, which is the only one that is pertinent to my focus. His novel idea is not that hard to encapsulate, actually. Basically he has learned about and has become excited by recent discoveries in polymer chemistry, specifically something called ‘molecular imprinting in polymers’ (MIP). This is a process by which chains of polymers seem to exhibit a kind of ‘memory’ at a molecular level.

From the article:

This technology involves the imprinting of synthetic polymer substances using enzymes or such macromolecules as ‘guest’ molecules. As a result of imprinting, nanocavities with 3-d spacial [sic] configurations complementary to the ‘guest’ molecules will be created in the interaction surfaces of the polymers. These imprinted polymers, by virtue of the nanocavities they contain can be used to bind molecules with configurational similarity to ‘guest’ molecules. They are at present widely used in various laboratory assays as powerful adsorption surfaces and molecular sensors. MIPs are also found to be of much practical use in various areas of science and technology.

He then takes a bold step in suggesting that a similar phenomenon might be at work in the water/alcohol substrate which every homeopathic remedy is “prepared” in. He formulates the problem in the following way:

"What is the exact character and dynamics of this physical transformations occurring in the alcohol-water mixture during potentization? How is the information regarding the medicinal properties of drug molecules encoded into these physical formations, and preserved even without the presence of a single original drug molecule? What is the exact molecular dynamics of therapeutic action of these highly diluted preparations? How they interfere in the bio-chemic interactions of an organism, thereby removing the specific pathologic molecular inhibitions? The future of homeopathy and medical sciences at large, depends on the answers we provide for these fundamental questions. With apology, the author dares to delve into the depth of these vital issues, equipped with his very limited resources."

Since he already presupposes that homeopathy works, he thinks it completely plausible to posit this analogue between polymers and water. Now, if this were so, it could very well account for the alleviation of symptoms that one might experience from a homeopathic tincture which statistically has been diluted well beyond the likelihood of there being any molecules of the corresponding substance in the solution. He well knows of this conundrum. Imprinting in water would be a brilliant solution to the problem. That would rock. The trouble is that water and polymers are not much alike. We have no reason to make such a comparison between apples and pineapples. It is a completely unwarranted step.

Why?

Well, to illustrate this equivocation, we need to go a bit into the definition and attributes of polymers. Simply stated a polymer is the result of molecules uniting with other molecules to form a chain. In a sense, polymers are the organic analogue of mineral crystallization, where a matrix (lattice) is established according to the spatial and ionic configuration of the molecules involved. Nambiar’s own discussion of protein polymerization is not inaccurate, in fact:

Proteins are a class of highly complex nitrogen-containing bio-molecules, functioning as the primary carriers of all the bio-chemic processes underlying the phenomenon of life. There exist millions of protein molecules belonging to thousands of protein types in a living organism. Each protein molecule is formed by the polymerization of monomers called amino acids, in different proportions and sequences. Each protein type has its own specific role in the bio-chemic interactions in an organism. Most of the amino acids necessary for the synthesis of proteins are themselves synthesized from their molecular precursers [sic] inside the body. A few types of amino acids cannot be synthesized inside the body, and have to be made available through food. These are called essential amino acids. There are specific protein molecules assigned for each bio-chemic process that take place in the body. Various proteins play different types of roles, like biological catalysts or enzymes, molecular receptors, transport molecules, hormones and antibodies. Some proteins function as specialized molecular switches, systematically switching on and off of specific bio-chemic pathways. Proteins are synthesized from amino acids, in conformity with the neucleotide [sic] sequences of concerned genes, with the help of enzymes, which are themselves proteins. ‘Protein synthesis’ and ‘genetic expression’ are very important part of vital process. It may be said that genes are molecular moulds for synthesizing proteins. There are specific genes, bearing appropriate molecular codes of information necessary for synthesizing each type of protein molecule. Even the synthesis of these genes happens with the help of various enzymes, which are protein molecules. There is no any single bio-molecular process in the living organism, which does not require an active participation of a protein molecule of any kind. The most important factor we have to understand while discussing proteins is the role of their three-dimensional spacial [sic] organization evolving from peculiar di-sulphide bonds and hydrogen bonds. Water plays a vital role in maintaining the three dimensional organization of proteins intact, thereby keeping them efficient to participate in the diverse biochemical processes. Proteins exhibits different levels of molecular organization: primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary. It is this peculiar three dimensional structure that decides the specific bio-chemic role of a given protein molecule. More over, co-enzymes and co-factors such as metal ions and vitamins play an important role in keeping up this three-dimensional structure of protein molecules intact, thereby activating them for their specific functions.

This is all true. Unfortunately for his argument, water has none of the “chains of proteins in specific configurations” properties that would make it an analogue to polymers. Water is a dipolar molecular fluid, a solvent, where polymers are not. It has unique properties of cohesion and adhesion which affect things like its relatively high freezing and melting points and rate of evaporation, but it is otherwise a fairly simple fluid. In order for Nambiar’s hypothesis to bear out, he would have to posit (and he does) that water has the ability to retain a three-dimensional negative image of whatever “guest” particle is in suspension. In other words, he would have to posit that water has “memory.”

Is there research that Nambiar can appeal to in this regard?

Well, there was a paper in 1988 from a man named Jacques Benveniste (1935–2004), who essentially claimed that he has observed such a phenomenon (i.e. the memory of water), but subsequent rigorous experiments failed to repeat the results reported in his original paper, and the idea was pretty much discredited. Nambiar, of course, needs “memory of water” for his idea to work, and so, he laments the discrediting of the paper and thinks that it was the arrogance of the establishment that was to blame for suppressing a great discovery:

"He suspected that the molecular memory of the antibodies which was imprinted in water during dilution is responsible for this peculiar phenomenon. But the sad part of this story is that he failed to prove his arguments in the repeated experiments which were conducted in an atmosphere of absolute hostility, under the supervision of experts who were inimical to him, whose sole aim was to disprove him."

Why is it sad that the experiment wasn’t able to be replicated? Oh yeah, I remember, because Nambiar needs this to be really real. But if the phenomenon which he discovered were in fact real, experiment would have revealed them to be so, whether there was hostility or not, right. Yet, despite the general discrediting of Benevite’s assumptions, Nambiar proceeds to use them as though they were in fact verified to be true and useful. This is the point at which Nambiar’s train of thought completely derails and he is revealed to be a shark-jumper.

"Obviously [my emphasis], hydration shells assume an internal spacial arrangement exactly fitting to the 3-dimensional spacial configuration of the foreign molecule entrapped in them. If we could devise some technique to remove the entrapped ‘guest’ molecules from these hydration shells, without disturbing the hydrogen bonds between the constituent water molecules, these hydration shells can still retain the molecular memory of the molecular configurations of the removed ‘guest’ molecules. This rarely studied phenomenon is known as ‘molecular memory of water’."

Or try these little gems …

"It has been well proven that these hydration shells later show a peculiar capability to differentially recognize the original ‘guest’ molecules which were responsible for their formation." …

"Even if the ‘host’ molecules are removed from clathrates, the network of water molecules have been found to remain intact. " [again, my emphases]

No footnotes or references to the research involved in either of these statements. Just bald assertions filled with certitude, which the reader should just take as a factually true. Right? Needless to say, this is embarrassing and shameful.

Probably realizing that he doesn’t have any support anywhere for his “memory of water” assertions, he reaches deep into the absurd:

"We all know that water exists as ice crystals in its solid form. But it has been recently observed that water can exist even in its liquid form in crystals. In reality, water formed by melting of ice is in a state of liquid crystals. "

Even if this were true; would it be relevant? Has anyone ever heard of homeopathic remedies being prepared in water which is in a state of either melting or freezing? That one is just desperate flailing, if you ask me. Yet, despite all of this nonsense, he insists in portraying himself as a maverick in the field:

"I am well aware that these revolutionary concepts may not be so easily welcomed by the mainstream homeopathic profession, conditioned by education and experience of long years into dogmatic concepts and fixed mindsets on these issues. I may be running into a major controversy due to my theoretical interventions and revisionist concepts. But somebody has to come forward and ‘bell the cat’, and open up a discussion on scientific re-building of homeopathy, at any point of time. Once my assumption that the secret of potentization lies in the phenomenon of ‘molecular imprinting’ is experimentally proved to be correct, my suggestions may become more relevant and acceptable."

If he were standing before me, I would like to ask him, “What, pray tell, sir, are you doing toward this end?  — Have you tried research?”

The Achilles’ heel in his house of cards can be pinpointed with one final quotation from this blog post:

"It is in the phenomenon of ‘molecular memory of water’ itself that we naturally land on when we attempt to scientifically explain the homeopathic potentisation of drugs. We have already seen that the alcohol–water molecules contained in the medium used for potentization, arrange themselves around the drug molecules, and form hydration shells. The drug molecules entrapped in the hydration shells are systematically removed as a result of serial dilutions and shaking, done as part of potentization. Empty hydration shells or ‘hydrosomes’ remain. These ‘hydrosomes’ are nano-cavities, imprinted with the three-dimensional ‘finger print’ of drug molecules used as ‘guest’ molecules. [my emphasis] This phenomenon may be called as ‘molecular imprinting in water’. These ‘hydrosomes’ are the real active principles of homeopathic medicines, potentized above 30C."

The idea that water molecules, connected by hydrogen bonds that last for only about a picosecond (that’s 10^-12 ) before breaking and reforming, could somehow cluster into long-lived mimics of an antibody in suspension within their proximity is simply absurd on the face of it. Add to this nonsense the idea that the guest molecules somehow fall out of place and leave an imprint, as if that is how dilution of aqueous solutions works . . . . . as if adding water to something were the same thing as removing particles from water … 

I think I'll stop right here, actually.

I’ve tried to retain some semblance of civility while reviewing this man’s writing. It hasn't been easy.

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… what lost tribes? …

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Joseph Smith preaching to the Lamanites

Although there is absolutely no evidence for such a thing, the legend that the Native Americans were descendants of the lost tribes of Israel has been around for over four hundred years. It's in fact one of the truths that is taught to all Mormons. But Joseph Smith didn't make it up. 

The first book to advance this idea was Diego Duran's History of the New World, written in 1575 or so. The theory had almost certainly circulated orally, however, for at least a couple of generations before Duran wrote about it. According to him, the natives of the West Indies definitely "are the ten tribes of Israel that Shalmaneser, king of the Assyrians, made prisoners and carried to Assyria." Many amateur and professional historians have written articles and books offering proof of this fantastic theory. Even William Penn did one.

The most ambitious study of the subject was by the Irish eccentric Edward K. Kingsborough. His subsidized nine-volume work on the Antiquities of Mexico, published at two-year intervals beginning in 1830 (hmm, … I wonder what Smith was reading right about this time) cost him more than £100,000. Though he died in a debtor's prison, Kingsborough's attempt to identify the ancient Mexicans with the ten lost tribes satisfied few but himself. 

Not only is there no linguistic, archaeological, historical, or DNA evidence (that last one is a doozy that won't be glossed over) that American Indians are of Hebrew ancestry; the Bible itself nowhere advances a theory that ten of the traditional twelve tribes suddenly vanished. Even the phrase "lost tribes" never appears in scripture.  Not even once. What gives? 

This theory is just completely fictional from top to bottom. I wonder how the Mormons will deal with the DNA tests that repudiate the claim outright. 

Does anyone know if they still teach this?

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quote of the day …

— 'What fruit dost thou bring back from this thy vision?'


— 'An ordered life in every state.'

(Evelyn Underhill
Mysticism
p.23)

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A review of Bart Ehrman's "Did Jesus Exist"

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Bart Ehrman is a rock star. Well … as close to a rock star as a geeky Ivy League academic with tenure can get, anyway. After a long industrious, prolific, and distinguished career teaching the historical Jesus, he now finds himself in a most enviable position, one that other lesser-known New Testament scholars drooly aspire to. He is without question the best-selling author in the field of New Testament studies today, penning one successful (and usually provocative—at least to the evangelical mindset) book on Christian origins after another. His is an impressive (and lucrative) streak. Well-known among scholars, he's also become an ubiquitous presence in the talk-show circuit, in book-signing tours, on the radio, in documentaries that profile the latest reconstruction(s) of Jesus, and in all manner of media. He's big time, a go-to "professional expert", as ubiquitous now as Bishop Spong, Elaine Pagels, Dom Crossan, and N.T. Wright have been for a while.  

His latest work is titled Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. Its purported subject is mythicism, that is, the notion that the legend of Jesus might be just that, legendary, not based on a real historical personality, but instead on an essentially fictional character.  Simply put (too simply, in my opinion): the notion that Jesus did not really exist. 

I'd read several of his previous books before — Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet …, Misquoting Jesus, and Forged. — so I am familiar with his general take on the historical Jesus. He subscribes to the failed apocalyptic millennial prophet model which Schweitzer espoused at the turn of the century and Renan before him. I am also familiar with his narrative style, which I have always found, I must confess, to be excessively confident and a bit prosaic. This general rhetorical bent is continued in Did Jesus Exist.

Several highly critical reviews of this book have already appeared in the blogosphere, one of the most damning being that of Richard Carrier on his blog, which (rightly) focuses on the copious —the blatantly obvious, and even sophomoric— errors in the book, errors which only a very sloppy writer with little regard for accuracy would make. I won't rehash those here, but I recommend Carrier's review very much. Instead, I would like to highlight an aspect of Ehrman's book which I feel has been overlooked by many critics. 

From the very start, Ehrman readily admits that he is writing not for those who might find the Christ Myth theory tenable (he dismisses such people categorically as obstinate and beyond persuasion in the book's introduction). He writes instead for all those who are "seeking the truth" in these matters. Bracket for the moment the polemical presumptuousness and circularity of this preliminary statement of his intention (i.e. mythicists are not truth seekers or else they wouldn't be mythicists, right?). What I find troubling about this opening move is that it is an indirect admission on his part that he has no intention of being thorough in his critique of mythicism. This is also evident in the length of his book (369 pages), the briefness of which is certainly not enough by itself to warrant condemnation; after all, John Dominic Crossan managed to skillfully demolish the gist of Raymond Brown's 1600+ page (two hefty volumes) opus, The Death of the Messiah, in less than 300 pages (in his Who Killed Jesus). Brevity is thus not necessarily a liability, but I am afraid that in the case of Ehrman's book, the length reflects his biased selectivity and subsequent methodological cavalierness, his predilection to dismiss mythicism uncritically as so much "conspiracy" mongering, picking and choosing only some issues from the mythicist literature that he can deal with in a superficial and cavalier manner. After all, a conspiracist is a conspiracist, right? Granted, there have been many self-professed mythicists who don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, but then there are those who are quite versed in the materials pertaining to Christian origins and are very incisive and insightful. Ehrman does seem to make some kind of distinction between the two, but only superficially, for, as one reads his assesments of scholars such as Wells and Price, one finds him using the same derisive undertones that he also uses on less-credible work (e.g. Freke-Gandy, et al). He even treats Earl Doherty, the author of probably the most thorough argument for a Christ Myth theory in existence with disdain and he (intentionally?) misrepresents and mischaracterizes many of Doherty's positions. Anyone who has read Doherty's book must conclude that Ehrman simply didn't, that he probably relied instead on time-saving synopses of it. Or, if he did read it, it must have been  whilst preparing his taxes, mowing the lawn, watching a movie or something as distracting. Again, I won't rehash his mischaracterizations of Doherty in this review (Neil Godfrey has already done a much better job of analysing them in detail than I could on his blog — here, here, here, here, here, here, and here — that Godfrey sure is prolific ;).

Ehrman also explicitly states that he is not writing a "scholarly" work, that his aim is a book that will be accessible more to a general (pop) audience, dealing not with minutia but with general claims. This directly contradicts his publisher's misleading description of the book on Amazon's Kindle store, which reads: " […]Ehrman demolishes both the scholarly and popular mythicist arguments against the existence of Jesus […] ".

Wait a minute, Ehrman demolishes the scholarly arguments?

Hell, as anyone who has extensively read the literature of The Tübingen School and read the Dutch Radicals (who had a profound influence on what would eventually become mythicism — Ehrman doesn't mention them except for Bruno Bauer in passing) and read the turn-of-the-century and newer wave of skeptics will realize, Ehrman doesn't even address the scholarly arguments! Of course, his intended audience, unfamiliar as they are with the pertinent materials, will casually assume that Ehrman has done the leg work necessary to make his case thoroughly. 'He is Bart Ehrman, after all. He must know what he's talking about.'

But put even that failure aside for the moment. Did Jesus Exist's main fault is prior to all of this and more simply stated. The Achilles' heel, to my eyes, the thing that makes me raise my eyebrow regarding this little book, the thing that puzzles me most, is Ehrman's decision to do a pop book rather than a scholarly one. Logic dictates that the latter type is required first in order to lend credence to the former type.  He's got it bass-akwards. How can one distribute authorative information to the masses, when one has not bothered to do a thorough review of the material in question first?  He presents himself as authoritative but only reveals his laziness on this one. This could have been a great book.

This really has me scratching my head. Why has Bart Ehrman done such an irresponsible hack job at this stage in his career? I think that maybe his new-found rock star status has gone to his head.

Needless to say, I think that this is arguably Ehrman's worst effort yet.

I'm sure that it will do very well, though. .

Given all that I have said above, I suggest that future editions of the book replace both  the title and the cover with ones that are more appropriate to this book's actual content:

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Coriolanus (the motion picture) …

Like practically everyone else in the English-speaking world, I had to read several Shakespeare plays when I was in high school: Julius Caesar, Henry IV (Pt1), Macbeth. Some time later I would eventually also read  A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, and Hamlet. Although I have found his archaic language to be somewhat of a challenge (given that I spoke Spanish exclusively until I was twelve years of age), the universality of Shakespeare's stories and characters always shines through, allowing me to find the beauty within the tales.   

Fast forward to last Thursday, when I was hanging out with my friend Frank, who suggested that we go see a movie at the Camelview Cinema. I said, "sure, what do you wanna see?" He said that he had listened to a review of a new film called Corolianus on NPR, and that he was eager to see it. "What is it about?" I asked. He said it was a modern rendition of a Shakespearean play. "Which one?" — "Coriolanus." — "That's a Shakespeare play?" — "Yes." — "I never heard of that one." — "Neither had I until today."

We were on our way to see a Shakespeare play that neither of us had ever heard about.

In a nutshell, Coriolanus is the story of a ruthless Roman general who returns home from a successful campaign against an insurrection (the Volscians) against Rome. The people heap much adulation upon him as a military hero at first, only to turn on him at the instigation of the senators who, because they fear that he may become powerful beyond their ability to control him, conspire to denounce him as a hyper-ambitious tyrant-in-waiting. The mob flip flops. The citizens go from bestowing a consulship on Coriolanus to taking it away and banishing him all within a couple of minutes in the film. The change of heart happens so fast it almost gave me whiplash. Exiled, his glory and honor stripped away, Coriolanus makes his way to the Volscians he once fought so fiercely, this time to join them in laying siege to Rome, thus exacting revenge on those who ruined his life. Fortunately (for Rome), Coriolanus' mother is a die-hard Roman patriot. She comes to see him (with his wife and child in tow) and shames him into signing a peace treaty. He goes to Rome, signs it, and upon his return he is murdered by the Volscians who feel betrayed by this turncoat mercenary. Fin.

Because I had never heard of this Shakespeare play before seeing this film, I looked it up in my The Complete Works of William Shakespeare when I got home. Sure enough, there is was. Why hadn't I known of this play before? It's funny how we miss so many details in the things around us. Reading the original, it was interesting to note the way that it had been edited for the screen. One aspect that made the film version particularly fascinating is the anachronistic use of Elizabethan English in an early twenti-first century setting. This superimposition lends the piece a surreal lyrical quality that would not ordinarily be there in a mainstream war movie. It is simultaneously essential to the story's flow and a bit distracting, which is to say that I still have difficulty with the archaic language and meter of Shakespearean dialogue, I guess.

All that aside, what is my take on the play?

I find that, unlike the other Shakespeare plays that I have read, this one has no clear hero or villain. Both sides of the conflict are equally despicable — Coriolanus in his aristocratic sense of entitlement and his obvious contempt for the common people, and the scheming tribunes who take advantage of their credulity and simple-mindedness and who manipulate them for their own greed and lust for power. A pox on both their houses! I could not help but be reminded of the cruel and dirty business of the politics of government, and of why I detest nationalism in any form. Extreme patriotism is the refuge of scoundrels (who was it that said that?).

The play is new to me, but once again I find that Shakespeare skillfully wove a timeless tale that faithfully reflects the nuanced frailty of the human condition in his inimitable fashion.

Ó

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