el año nuevo

 

Here's to a time they'll call 2008 C.E.

Cheers!

Ó

 

okay . . . one more . . .

This is the last quiz I cover. I promise.
(cross my fingers and hope to fly)

o_O

Take the test here

Dude!!! I can almost tolerate the Sinead O'Connor nod . . .

But . . .
. . . . friggin Mariah Carey??!!! — WTF!!

Heavens to Mergatroy!! . . . . (and Betsies even!!!)

o_Ó

But then I remember that once while bored in a waiting room in those ancient pre-internet days (O blessed Cambrian explosion—blessed Guttenberg² ) I took one of those quizzes in Cosmopolitan Magazine which concluded then that I was a "VERY liberated woman".

So . . . maybe Cosmo was right after all!!

(gulps)

anyway . . .

pax

Ó

.

slight of hindsight: (it's not in the texts, dude)

I listened to this debate on the historicity of the resurrection between Richard Carrier and Michael Licona a few days ago. At several points in the debate Licona repeatedly refered to the "fact" of James' conversion from "hostile" to "faithful" as evidence in favor of the historicity of the resurrection. The amateur historian in me winces every time I hear this kind of reasoning. I'm surprised that Carrier didn't call attention to Licona's repeated fallacy.

Let's ask the obvious: What conversion?

I think that arguing from a Jacobean conversion is faulty for various reasons.
First of all, where is this conversion mentioned in the New Testament? One can infer a conversion from the apparent disjunction between two extremes— i.e. on the one hand, from Mark's (3:19–35) portrayal of Jesus' family as essentially antagonistic (they thought him mad), and on the other, from the clear authority that was James' in Jerusalem after Jesus' death (Acts)— but I think that it is only because we are conditioned by tradition that we do this, the texts themselves don't warrant such an inference. Our mind recognizes a logical problem which requires a solution, and the easiest way to resolve this seeming contradiction (for us the faithful inheritors) and to fill in this gap is to posit a "conversion".

We can also infer it from 1 Cor 15 if we wish, but the only thing we really get in that list is a defense of James' right to apostleship as safevouched by his "having seen" the resurrected Jesus; no conversion is described. Part of the problem here is that folks tend to project Paul's christological constructs onto James, and this is something which I think is simply unsupported by the texts. It would be fantastic if we had any extant bits of writing from such early Christians as Apollos or Barnabas or Theclas, so to compare the variegation of christologies as they were being conceived, lived and taught by the apostles, but we simply don't have any of these, and I think it is wrong to ascribe pauline views so universally just because his are the only writings that survived. It's easy to think James was a Christian in the Pauline vein only after being indoctrinated into a formal faith system that presumes to call the meeting between the two leaders the "Jerusalem Council" and which the author of Acts wants you to think ended amicably (yet also conceding to Paul's gentile mission, this despite Yacob's bloodline relation to Jeshua). This is the same kind of pious logic that also anachronistically refers to Cephas as the first "pope".

As a last resort, we may appeal to the weight of "tradition" but then, when we realize that the closest thing to an early reference to a Jacobean conversion that we have available to us is from the second century Gospel of the Hebrews (an excerpt preserved by Jerome), this prospect becomes rather dim.

In short, no conversion of James is mentioned anywhere in the New Testament.

Fast forward a couple of days.

Now even the pope is engaging in this kind of faulty inference:

I finally got around to reading a translation of Benedict XVI's Spe Salvi encyclical. I'll limit my comments on it to just pointing out one of these conditioned (but ill-founded) inferences that he used in it.
Specifically, he included the name of Barabbas in a list of "political activists." My point here is not to engage the pope's main argument in this letter, but to highlight an hermeneutic error. I have always thought that Mark's wording of his very brief description of Barabbas was very vague.

hn de o legomenoV barabbaV meta twn stasiastwn dedemenoV oitineV en th stasei fonon pepoihkeisan.
"And one called Barabbas was being held with the insurgents who had comitted murder during the uprising."

The labeling of Barabbas as a murderer or even as a zealot is not as overt or explicit as one is conditioned to think it is and though he is held "with" the insurgents, he is not necessarily one of them.

But that kind of semantic parsing aside, has it ocurred to the pope that the story of the freeing of Barabbas is most likely fictional? First, no such custom of releasing one Jewish prisoner during Passover, as described in the story, ever existed under Pilate's rule. To hear the gospels tell it, Pilate was afraid of the Jews. On the contrary, the record shows that Pilate was notoriously ruthless in his dealings with them, particularly in his crowd-control techniques. Barabbas is obviously a fictional character. His name in fact is a very good clue to the symbolic function that his character serves in the story. Some of the earliest manuscripts of the gospel include his full name: Jesus Barabbas— Jesus, Son of the father. He's part of a "scapegoat" paralell construction in the gospel. This is clearly a Yom Kippur symbol.


But then again, the pope also refers to Ephesians as though it was an authentic Pauline letter, so it's no wonder that another, more nuanced textual anomally should slide right by him and go over his head.

On a final side note:
I used to respect and admire his predecessor very much, even when I disagreed with his pronouncements.
I cannot say the same thing about this new guy. Basing my opinion on his performance so far, I honestly fear that he might cause more harm than good in his tenure as pope.

I'm hopeful nonetheless.

pax

Ó

a quixie looksee at quizzical quizzes . . .

In this post, I submit myself as a control specimen with a view toward analysing the accuracy of some currently popular online quizzes. There are hundreds of them; they're a snap to design and post on your blog. Which member of the latest boy band is the cutest? What's the most popular color of IPod? You get the idea.

Yesterday, I posted the results of one such online quiz. It was no surprise that I turned out to be a "Paul Tillich", especially considering the limited number of people on the list. In truth, I actually do rather enjoy what I've read of his writing. I was first introduced to him while reading Aldous Huxley's anthology of the mystics, The Perennial Philosophy some years back, where he is quoted often, and I've since read a few things by him. His brand of theology reminds me of a Buddhist worldview. Ordinarily, I find theology to be the art of being fastidious and precise about that which we can know very little about in the first place, and so I tend to not care so much about it as a serious intellectual pursuit. It seems like so much singing about architecture to me. But Tillich's is a different take on it, to some degree because he strips God of personality, a brilliant stroke if you ask me (and, as Huxley and many others knew, thinkers have been "Tillichian" throughout the ages of mystic thought) but he alienated (and continues to do so) those within orthodoxy camps who thought he was trying to sneak an atheist or deist kind of god into Christianity through the back door. It fascinates me that many of those who have been censured as "heretics" or even "atheists" by their contemporaries have often been the most lucid and eloquent and original thinkers-about-god (but then, originality is intrinsically anathema to those who insist on inerrancy and literalism a priori, so what do we expect?). Anyway, I guess that 60% Tillichian is about as theological as I get.

Charles Finney?

60%?
Hmm . . . methinks that maybe the algorithm got stuck on one or two questions somewhere down the line. My guess is that, given the slim pickins of choices of theologian, the answers to those questions dealing with predestination and atonement not only caused my Calvin-O-meter to go down down down, but they also confused the algorithm into thinking I relate to Finney somehow. The enemy of my enemy, however, is not necessarily my friend (Logic 101). But, seeing that my "Calvin" score was already 0, I guess it felt justified in compensating elsewhere in the scale and thus deeming me a Finnian (sans rainbow, that is). But I reject for the most part my Finney score (at least, certainly not 60%).

For those who might adduce at this point that I'm in denial of some kind, consider the fact that I believe in neither the incarnation, nor revelation, nor prophecy, and that I think that Jesus' death on the cross has no theological significance whatsoever. You tell me how much I have in common with Finney.

Beside that, I think it's funny that I would score at all on the Jonathan Edwards scale. I'm guessing that the answer to the question regarding whether I think that "good preaching" is more important than "good theology" confused the algorithm to linking me to him. That's the main trouble with these quizzes. The computer doesn't know that the reason that I answered "preaching" is not because I think liturgy more important than theology, but because I think that, since theology is elusive at best as a system of knowledge (it goes WAY over the head of most congregants), at least good preaching leads to good conduct (ideally, at least), which ultimately is a worthwhile enterprise, in my view. Given a simple choice between one and the other while disregarding the gamut of grey in between the two, one then chooses between black or white relatively, and this then leads the quiz to the wrong conclusion.

One wonders if the accuracy of these quizzes would improve with the number of questions. Here are the results of another such quiz:



Agan, the results more or less reflect my tendencies, but I'm amazed that I scored on the pentecostal scale at all. It's surely the result of yet another greyless question

I'm also left wondering . . . .
What the hell is a neo-orthodox?

But then again . . . I figure . . . if you have to take a quiz to tell you where your theological tendencies lie . . . . there might be something wrong . . . . (laughs)

Here's another:

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	Low
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Moderate
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

---

Theology aside . . . One of the more interesting quizes I encountered was one on whether one is generally right-brained or left-brained.

My results:

Are You Right or Left Brained?

You Are 55% Left Brained, 45% Right Brained

The left side of your brain controls verbal ability, attention to detail, and reasoning. Left brained people are good at communication and persuading others. If you're left brained, you are likely good at math and logic. Your left brain prefers dogs, reading, and quiet. The right side of your brain is all about creativity and flexibility. Daring and intuitive, right brained people see the world in their unique way. If you're right brained, you likely have a talent for creative writing and art. Your right brain prefers day dreaming, philosophy, and sports.

What I found interesting about this one is not just that it more or less reflects my 50%/50% mind fairly well (if one posits a 5% margin of error, that is), but that it leans to the left like it does. I did study engineering and quite enjoyed tackling mathematical problems once upon a time (I was one of those kids who actually loved Calculus class), but I make my way through the world by means of my musical and visual art expressions these days, which would make one think that I would lean a little to the right.

In reality, I've always maintained that the emotional and esthetic releases (the joy derived and the frustration felt) involved in the solution of either a mathematical or an aesthetic problem are exactly the same in magnitude and I suspect in quality as well, though I can't imagine how one could measure this.

A couple of problematic things with THIS particular quiz:
It concludes that I prefer dogs. Excuse me? Prefer them to what? Parmesan cheese? Bunnyrabbits? Cats? If cats, this is another example of that greyless kind of question. The fact is that my preference is for no pets at all. The same goes for the supposed "sports" preference on the right side too.

Okay . . . enough of these quizzes.

Ó

Which theologian are you?

You scored as a Paul Tillich


Paul Tillich sought to express Christian truth in an existentialist way. Our primary problem is alienation from the ground of our being, so that our life is meaningless. Great for psychotherapy, but no longer very influential.

Paul Tillich             —————————————        60%
Charles Finney           —————————————        60%
Jonathan Edwards         ————                 20%
Augustine                ————                 20%
Friedrich Schleiermacher ———                  13%
Karl Barth               ——                   7%
Jürgen Moltmann          ——                   7%
Martin Luther                                 0%
John Calvin                                   0%
Anselm                                        0%

Ó

carol . . .

"peace on Earth and good will to all men"
sounds like such a lovely idea . . .


Ó

irreverence as art . . .

"Aki no teto romba (tei chintes)."

The year was 1975. Punk was busy being born and dying at the same time (inevitable, really—oh, the irony!).

Picture this:
A tall slender man walks onstage on yard-high platform boots (this was a mere two years after KISS's first record, mind you), wearing not much more than a silver jockstrap and a wig of copious wavy blond hair. Thick campy makeup. A psychotic Goldielocks wielding an oversized guitar body which in retrospect reminds me of Prince's later auto-erotic showpieces.

The song was "White Punks on Dope," a paen to self-indulgent suburbanite teenage Americans. The band was the Tubes. They specialized in the parodying of extravagance in music way back then, before the lure of fame and riches got to them and they themselves comitted the cardinal sin called "selling out."

They understood the value of "shock".

It happened sometime in the late twentieth century. Post-modernism, inasmuch as it can be blamed, was bound to produce artists whose methods relied on "shock" to achieve an asthetic end. Irreverence as a primary color.

I've been thinking about this lately because my friend Rob and I were surfing YouTube videos and happened upon some old Andy Kaufman footage. This got me thinking about Lenny Bruce before him, and about Howard Stern after him, and about the continuity in that chain. These were men who pushed the limits with their appeals to brutal honesty. Such carefree honesty is traditionally reviled.
People were appalled by Lenny's temerity. They were simultaneously weirded out and indifferent to Andy's experiments in the absurd. Though Howard is seen as a kind of pariah by the communnity at large and is avoided by all who fear what being in the crosshairs of his acerbic scorn might be like, he is one of the most successful and highest-paid entertainers in history and has paved the way for countless comedians who now hone their vulgarity and innuendo skills to razor sharpness. In the many Improvs throughout the land, you can pretty much say whatever you want. This is a relatively new phenomenon.

Shock sells when once it didn't.

If the progression could be graphed, it would look like an exponential curve showing increased tolerance for what used to be unmentionable fare. We went from nearly zero to sky's-the-limit in a matter of a few decades. The world has changed so much that Lenny was pardoned by the state of New York posthumously (in 2003—thirty-seven years after the fact) of his indecency conviction (Governor Patakis at the time cited the state's comittment to the first ammendment as the reason for the pardon). It has changed so much that what seemed scandalous in those post-war years is an almost daily occurence, beckoning our passing attention only in extreme cases, like when Michael Richards, in a moment of uncontrolled rage, lost it and went apeshit on a heckler last year.

It's a post-hiphop, post-post-post-Norman-Rockwell world. I think this is a case of Pandora refusing to go back in the box. I don't watch television anymore (it's been a long time now—over fifteen years), so, for all I know, it's even worse than I imagine out there!

Hmm . . .

Anyway . . . in honor of Lenny Bruce, here's an obscure Randy Newman recording from 1968, when the memory of his martyred soul was still fresh in the minds of those that he inspired. I have a thing for songs that can say as much as possible in as short a time as possible. This one clocks in at less than two minutes.

Laughing Boy (realAudio)

Laughing Boy keep movin'
Keep movin', Keep movin'
Laughing Boy keep movin'
Keep movin', Keep movin'

Find a clown and grind him down
He may just be laughing at you
An unprincipled and uncommitted
Clown can hardly be permitted to
Sit around and laugh at what
The decent people try to do

Laughing Boy keep movin'
Keep movin', Keep movin'
Laughing Boy keep movin'
Keep movin', Keep movin'

Ó

Oh, be the music in my head . . .

. . . . . . . . . Oh, be my rest.

Ó

Twelve Days of X-mas: the bottom line

If you were to buy your true love each gift in the "Twelve Days of Christmas" song, it would cost you at least (US) $14,215.18

1. one partridge . . . Philadelphia Zoo . . . $15
   
2. one pear tree . . . Waterloo gardens . . . $89.99
   
3. two turtle doves . . . Philadelphia Zoo . . . $50
   
4. three french hens (US version) . . . Philadelphia Zoo . . . $15
   
5. four calling birds (canaries). . . Philadelphia Zoo . . . $280
   
6. five gold rings (modest ones). . . Gordon's Jeweller . . . $250
   
7. six geese a layin' . . . Philadelphia Zoo . . . $150
   
8. seven swans a swimmin' . . . Philadelphia Zoo . . . $3,500
   
9. eight maids a milkin' . . . (per hour) . . . $41.20
   
10. nine ladies dancing (per performance) . . . Philadelphia Dance Co. . . $3,933
    
11. ten lords a leapin' (per performance). . . Pennsylvania Ballet . . . $3,433.99
    
12. eleven pipers piping(per performance) . . . Musicians Society Union. . . $1,179.36
    
13. twelve drummers drumming (per performance) . . . Musicians Society Union. . . $1,277.64
    

The source and the price of the items are all according to PNC Bank Corp. in Pittsburgh.
source: The Associated Press

peace

Ó

On the Centenarian Defense as an Apologetic Strategy...

I'd like to devote this post to a subtle apologetic technique that I've encountered in recent conversations and blogsurfs. Some Christian apologists seem to be fond of citing patristic writings and then linking these citations to specific New Testament characters. This in itself is not necessarily a bad thing. The warning flags fly, however, whenever one claims that the characters "could have" lived to an extremely old age, old enough to have had contact with said patristic writer. A few examples follow:

centenarian #1: John the Evangelist

We are told that the apostle John, the son of Zebedee (and brother of James) is the same person that composed the fourth gospel. We are told that he lived to be over a hundred years old. This would explain how an actual eyewitness to the life of the historical figure of Jesus could have waited until the turn of the century to write down his account of the events that had transpired seven decades earlier (dating the fourth gospel earlier than say 90–100 C.E. would be problematic for various reasons). His having lived to such a ripe old age would also explain how a peasant fisherman from the Galilee would have found the time to take up and master the Greek language to such high degree that he was able to write in a highly advanced poetic style. It would also explain how he could have found the time to develop the elaborate christology that his gospel is so replete with. We know (with a reasonable degree of certainty, we must admit that the consensus is nearly universal on this) that the Gospel of Mark was the first canonical gospel written, followed by Matthew and Luke, and eventually by that of John. So it's just as well if he lived to be over a hundred.
But . . .

problems with this . . .

While I accept that there existed a certain John "the Elder" who was a highly esteemed presbyter who was remembered as an influential figure in the Christianity at the turn of the century, I am convinced that this is neither the same John who wrote the fourth gospel, neither is it the same John who was one of Jesus' closest companions. I remember the moment I grasped this fact; I was reading chapter 3 of Loisy's "Origins of the New Testament" some years ago.

Adding to the problems raised from equating the three Johns, there is some internal evidence that suggests that John (Bar Zebedee) was martyred alongside his brother James sometime between Paul's writing his Epistle to the Galatians (the 50s) and the author of Mark's writing his gospel (circa 70). — (Galatians speaks of meeting with the "three pillars." Mark (10:30–41) implies that John died along with his brother—if you frown at this suggestion, ask yourself if Mark would have made reference to the death of John along with his brother—verse 39— had John not already suffered martyrdom?)

There is also some external textual evidence (e.g. Papias by way of Eusebius, Philip of Side and George the Sinner) that suggests likewise.

As R. Alan Culpepper points out in his "John, the Son of Zebedee: The Life of a Legend" (2000, Fortress Press, p 174):

"The cumulative weight of the references just considered has been enough to keep alive the possibility of the early martyrdom of John but not sufficient to override the tradition of his long residence in Ephesus. As the tradition of the Ephesian residence becomes more suspect there has naturally been renewed interest in the testimonies regarding John's early martyrdom. It is not necessarily an either/or choice, however, between the traditions of a long residence in Ephesus or an early martyrdom in Jerusalem. Both may be legendary, and the circumstances of the death of John may simply be unknown, as are the circumstances of the deaths of most of the other apostles."

centenarian #2: Mary

A Catholic apologist recently insisted to me that the extant letter of Ignatius to the "virgin" Mary (and her reply to him, also extant) are quite possibly genuine Ignatian works, arguing that she could have lived to be a centenarian and thus "could have" (there's that magic phrase again!) communicated with Ignatius in this way.

problems with this . . .

First of all, the fact that neither Eusebius nor Jerome makes the least reference to these letters is a pretty good indication that they are spurious articles, written much later (in fact, the oldest manuscript of these letters dates to the 12th century).

That smoking gun aside, I reminded this fellow that, if Mary was about 15 years old when she gave birth to Jesus in approximately 4 B.C.E., and if Ignatius wrote his letters in 110 C.E., then Mary would have had to have lived to the age of at least 129! After pointing this out to my Catholic friend, he merely huffed and puffed and walked away. I haven't heard from him since. I wonder if he still believes those letters are genuine. Personally, I doubt that any of the Ignatian letters are genuine, but that is for another post altogether on another day.

centenarian #3: Jairus' daughter

I came upon a reference to Quadratus (a 2nd century apologist) the other day on a particularly pious blog that I sometimes read. The gist of the post was about Quadratus' testimony (preserved in Eusebius) that some of the people that Jesus had healed or brought back to life during his lifetime were still living at the time of his (Quadratus') writing (circa 125 C.E.). This blogger then went on to enthusiastically suggest that Jairus' daughter was likely who Quadratus was refering to.

problems with this . . .

Jairus asks Jesus in GMark to heal his "little daughter", so I'm guessing she was maybe 7 years old (give or take a year). This episode occurs early on in both the GMk and GLk narratives, so let's say for the sake of argument that it happenned somewhat early in Jesus' career—say the year 27. Therefore, in 125 C.E.—the time of Quadratus' writing—she would have been approximately 105 years old. Add to the probabilities involved in all of this the fact that the name "Jairus" can be translated from the Hebrew to something like "he will be raised", which suggests a mythic origin of the story.
Talitha cum, indeed.

Quadratus uses the plural too ("many of those healed"); I wonder who else was still alive at the time of Quadratus.
Maybe Lazarus?
Maybe the Gerasene demoniac? How old do you suppose HE would have been?. . . o_O

---

conclusion . . .

While I don't discount that a couple of the earliest Christians probably lived fairly long lives, I see a big red flag whenever I hear the "could have"-been-a-centenarian defense of some apologetic point or another. It all seems like special pleading to me. (If Mary lived to be 129, why has no one mentioned it?)

Anyway, I won't belabor this point further.

It would be nice, however, if apologists dropped the centenarian "could-have-been"s, which only serve to reveal a sense of urgent anxiety in the face of the enormous dearth of evidence regarding the apostolic period.

Ó

on relics . . .

On Saturday, the 23rd of February, of the year 155 C.E., Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, one of the most venerable and outspoken Christian heresy-bashers of that early period, was put to death by the local authorities. The details of his martyrdom, "preserved" by Iraneus, speak of a miracle happenning just then; according to the legend, he was bound and readied for being burned alive at the stake, but when the pile of fuel was ignited, the flames did not consume his body. Seeing that the fire would not take him, a guard was then ordered to pierce him with a lance, whereupon a dove appeared out of the blue and a prodigious amount of blood flowed out of him, extiguishing the fire beneath him. After his death, the fire was relit and his body was cremated and his reliquiae (remains) were collected by his devoted followers, who conducted a burial ceremony so that they could annually celebrate the anniversary of his martyrdom at his grave.

As a result of numerous similar incidents, the remains of the bodies of saints (or portions of them) came to be venerated as avenues of miraculous benefits and divine grace. In time, any object associated with a key figure in Christendom was jealously guarded as a wonder-working relic.

Veneration for relics, and the consequent search for the oldest of them, took on frenzied proportions during the medieval period. Skulls, teeth, rings and personal articles were especially sought after. Inevitably, the whole of Christendom became obsessed with relics linked to the New Testament account of Jesus' own life.

The chalice that Jesus supposedly drank from at the Last Supper thus became the Holy Grail. So much wood from the actual cross on which Jesus was crucified was collected, in fact, that an entire ark, capable of carrying two of every animal on earth, could probably be built from it (with enough left over to burn yet another martyr perhaps).

Most scholars doubt that any such handed-down relic is genuine, yet thousands of them are still displayed to this day—the most famous example being the Shroud of Turin—for the "edification of the pious."

Fast forward to our modern day . . .

The above photograph shows a lock of John Lennon's hair that was sold for approximately $48,000 today.

I can't help but be mildly amused at the veneration that people extend to celebrities. There is a queer irony here. In 1966, John Lennon caused a furor with his passing comment that the Beatles had become "more popular than Jesus." In the wake of this comment came numerous condemnations, criticisms, and even mass record-burnings. How dare he say such a thing?

Yet, here we are, forty years later, placing undue value on such things as a lock of the man's hair. I doubt that anyone will be praying over it (at least I hope not), or even hoping for some kind of vicarious benefit from it. Still, the adulation that things like this receive boggles the mind.

Ó

barefoot servants too . . . (another polaroid)

When I was seventeen years old I lived in the Bronx. The stomping grounds went from the upper 190s north along the Grand Concourse (starting from around Poe Park) and then hang a right at Bedford Park Boulevard, all the way to the Botanical Gardens. The gully between Decatur and Marion Aves. was one of the regular hangs.

I was recently contacted via email by one of the people I knew back then. We used to call him Pinhead, not in any pejorative way, it was just a name he had acquired in grade school, long before we had met him—something about a haircut gone awry.

He was a good kid; always a smile and a kind word to even the stranger.

I haven't seen this guy for probably twenty years. In his email, he asked me what I have been up to in recent years. I made the mistake of mentioning my decade-long interest in all manner of scholarship regarding the birth of Christianity, describing myself as an atheist Jesus freak in that first exchange. I didn't intend to stir up a hornet's nest; it was just a brief mention of one of my interests.

Shortly after that, he showered me with email after email after email (thirty of them in total) of citations (he is particularly fond of Jerome and the canonical Epistle to Titus). I wasn't expecting this barrage of questions or biblical citations. It struck me as a little odd, but I figured it would only be fair to at least try to respond. I addressed a few of the points he made in his first emailing spree and managed to send it off.

His messages were full of really bad apologetics.
It's hard to refute really bad apologetics, not because it contains any compelling argument, but because its proponents are not really interested in listening to counter-arguments. The art of apologetic is really the art of preaching to the choir (read an insightful essay on this phenomenon here by Robert J. Miller). It is a way to persuade adherents to a faith system that that system is not only acceptable theologically, but is also rationally and logically plausible. I think that people, once sold, are sold, period; it is almost impossible to deconvert the pious (which is why I admire people who manage to break free of the chains of dogmatism so much) and would rather defend their religion than listen to another's pitch.

Anyway, I quickly realized that Pinhead, my long-lost friend in adolescence, has become a pious Jehova's Witness convert. And it was obvious that he didn't appove of some of the things I might write about from time to time in this blog.

I was willing to play along and answer some of the questions he raised, most of them are quite easy to tackle. I even saw it as an interesting way to focus my thoughts on these topics through the lens of my own critical mind. After absorbing both the liberal and the conservative literature of the last century, I think I have a pretty good idea of where current scholarly consensus lies in any given controversial question regarding early Christian history.

I won't go too deeply into the bad apologetics he showered me with; one example should suffice:

He insisted that the Gospel of Matthew was completed by the year 41, before the Gospel of Mark, in "Palestine" (whether he means Judea or Samaria is unclear, but this kind of anachronistic shape-shifting is used in all of the apologetic material).

I tried to point out a couple of things which make such an early dating of Matthew improbable from a historical viewpoint. Some of the things I touched on were:

• The obvious reference to the destruction of the temple
• The almost universal scholarly consensus that Mark must have preceded both Matthew and Luke by at least a decade
• The fact that some of the redaction from one gospel to the other makes no sense at all if the direction of redaction is from Matt to Mk (especially in light of the fact that some of these redactions would even be anathema to the nascent Ekklesia — I'm thinking Mk 3:19 here)
• etc

So, I gently tried to show him that the apologetic stuff he was citing was mostly written by theologians and not by historians, which is okay, but any claim that Matthew was written in 41 is just simply historically unsupported and is just a pious desire for the text to be earlier than the evidence supports. I have no such need and so it doesn't bother me at all that Mark seems to have come first.

Anyway, like I said, I was willing to play along and go point by point. But one of the email subject lines caught my eye: "Expletives."

I skipped over the long list of emails and opened that particular one. It was a request that I refrain from using "expletives" in my responses. I guess that in my long expositions I must have thrown in a Bronxism or two. Lord knows I'm no vulgarian, but I'm not a prude either. Prudes are a red flag to me.

It kind of shocked me. It set me to meditating on the meaning of all this for some few moments.

This changed everything. It became obvious to me that Pinhead was acting in the role of missionary here.

I decided then to remind him where we both came from. I proceeded to remind him of who we had both been during those days when we hung out together on the streets of the Bronx. We did things together that would be considered scandalous in those days, even profane things, like rolling joints with paper from a Bible (the thinness of the paper is perfect for the task—those were the days). I'm not boasting here. I realize we were just stupid kids. My point is that people should not put on "holier-than-thou" airs, is all.

We had grown up in the Bronx, for God's sake! And now he was asking me to please not use the word "shit."

The nerve!

I'm not really sure what he expected me to respond with to his manic fanaticism—in hindsight, I realize that only a conversion would have satisfied him—but what he got from me instead was a scolding. What had been a pair of expletives slipped in for frivolous effect in my previous note were now intentional less-than-polite exhortations to mind the logs in his own eye.

"Let me get this straight:

You want me to adopt the religion that you espouse because you feel that it is somehow superior to the one I already may or may not have . . .

does that sound about right?

. . . hmmm . . . I see . . .""

What makes it all sad, is that he really is a sweet guy, generous and genuinely caring. Too bad he can't keep his preaching to himself. I wouldn't take that from my own mother, much less from one of my adolescence buddies.

Sorry, man. I love you, but the last thing I need in my life right now is a fanatical Jehova's Witness droid up my ass, dude. If you can't see beyond your religious pretensions to reach out and talk to ME (not some potential convert), there's just no point to it.

peace

Ó

Hertha

I that saw where ye trod
     The dim paths of the night,
Set the shadow called God
     In your sky to give light;
But the morning of manhood is risen, and the
     shadowless soul is in sight.

The tree many-rooted
     That swells to the sky,
With frondage red-fruited
     The life-tree am I;
In the buds of your lives is the sap of my leaves; ye
     shall live and not die.

But the Gods of your fashion
     That take and that give,
In their pity and passion
     That scourge and forgive,
They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off;
     they shall die and not live.

—Algernon Charles Swinburne

 

weedeater . . .

Sifting through a stack of CDs, I came across a promotional compilation of music from Louisiana ( Music: The Language of Louisiana — vol.1 ). One of the artists represented in this collection is a band with the name of Weedeater. I googled the name and found nothing more from these folks (there IS a newer heavy metal group with the same name now, but it's obviously not the same people). The seeming disjoint between the sound and the look of this group inspired me to blog about this. This little blurb is all I know about these fascinating musicians. Clink on the link below the foto to hear why (in realAudio) I find it so fascinating.

That's the liner note blurb. Below is their tune from the anthology.
Whoever these people are. Wherever they are. I love them for their originality and temerity.

Travel well, friend.
Godspeed to you.

Great Caesar's Ghost

llueve y escampa y otra vez ...

Played in the rain today. The Tempe Arts Festival. Under a huge canopy, yes, but rain has a funny way of going horizontal sometimes.

o_O

Had some hummus with Emilio after the gig at a new place on University and we somehow found our way into a deep conversation with a complete stranger named Manuel (un Salvadoreño que sabe mucho de mucho) who talked and talked while random fireworks resounded overhead from time to time, announcing some nearby touchdown (I was told it was the day of THE game between the ancient rivalry between ASU and UºA.). We must have been pretty loud. The cook, a wild-hearted young Navajo, at one point came out to ask us a question: Do we ever think about what it would feel like to be standing before God someday?

Manuel answered in language that the kid was too young to grasp, I think, buddhist-like exhortations to submission and suchlike. Denial of mind.

Emilio told the kid to stop being afraid.

Me . . . I just looked at the guy (I think he said his name was — ¿ maybe Nebbet ... ?) and told him that the day that we will stand before god has always been (and always is) right now. He smiled and said that he liked that.

Who knew that a passing comment about Castro would set us off on such an existential flurry of words? The proverbial butterfly effect.

Altogether a strange day.

Enlightenement? or simply caffeine delirium . . .

Ó