"We can construct factual accounts and systems from DNA, Gross National Product, legal code, but they don't begin to tell us how to order our astonishment."I object somewhat to her lumping economics and politics and science together as though they were equivalent. Science is quite apart from those other two. Science demands a level of predictability in experimentation which I would venture to say would disqualify those two conjectural and unpredictable enterprises as "sciences."
By request, here's the right side of the chart. When I went back to do this section, I realized that I had misread the color key for the previous chart, which I fixed. (note: these changes involve primarily the Johannine letters, so it has no bearing on the focus of my argument - Hebrews).
Legend:According to [Metzger, Bruce M. The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance. Clarendon Press. Oxford. 1987.] p. 159:
In another treatise Tertullian cites a passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews (6:4-8), which he attributes to Barnabas as the author, 'a man sufficiently accredited by God, as being one whom Paul had stationed next to himself'. (De pudic. 20)
In addition he makes the following statements concerning the Epistle to the Hebrews, in his Homilies upon it: 'That the character of the diction of the Epistles entitled 'To the Hebrews' has not the apostle's rudeness in speech, who acknowledged himself to be rude in speech (2 Cor. 6:6), that is, in style, but that the Epistle is better Greek in the framing of its diction, will be admitted by everyone who is able to discern differences of style. But again, on the other hand, that the thoughts of the Epistle are admirable, and not inferior to the acknowledged writings of the apostle, this also everyone who carefully examines the apostolic text will admit'. Further on he adds, If I gave my opinion, I should say that the thoughts are those of the apostle, but the style and composition belong to some one who remembered the apostle's teachings and wrote down at his leisure what had been said by his teacher. Therefore, if any church holds that this Epistle is by Paul, let it be commended for this also. For it is not without reason that the men of old time have handed it down as Paul's. But who wrote the Epistle in truth, God knows. Yet the account that has reached us [is twofold] , some saying that Clement, bishop of Rome, wrote the Epistle, and others, that it was Luke, the one who wrote the Gospel and the Acts. (6.25.11-14)
Behind Shallit:"Are there good reasons for scientists to believe in supernatural beings ?"Behind Durston:"Should a 21st century scientist believe in God ?"
It's interesting as you read through the Bible I could put the miracles in the Bible into three major categories. The first one is prophecy—information about the future that would require a source that transcends time. [...] Then the most powerful, I believe, is a supernatural intervention into an individual's life. Probably the most powerful—in fact when that happens you know God exists—it is also the most difficult to defend. Nevertheless, I'll just mention briefly an example of that [...] for you to think about. That has actually happened to me. My own first experience of God happened in nature. I could see that God was everywhere but yet infinitely separated from me. (Separated how? — How was this separation manifest to him - some ambiguous existential discontent?) And about that time in my life I was told, "well, the reason why God seems infinitely far from you is that you've committed moral violations that have established a barrier between you and God." Then he went on to tell me that God himself in the past had become a human being to take all moral violations of humanity upon himself to pay perfect justice for those things so that we would not have to do that ourselves and that barrier could be removed in our relationship with God. (Humanity having been humanity since the beginning, and given that even the Bible attests to the fact that man has always been a selfish, lustful, gluttonous, vengeful mess, what exactly made God wait until until Rome's occupation of Judea to decide to take up the issue of sweeping "moral violation" under-rug? What made it so suddenly necessary just then and there?) It was explained at that point that if I wanted this what I needed to do was to basically ask Jesus Christ to come into my life and take away the barrier that separates me from God and [...] give me this relationship. I said, "No." I didn't trust God at that point—I must've been afraid of him (Of course, what other reason could there be? ;P). However, I thought a lot about it over the subsequent weeks and one night as I was laying in bed I decided, 'wait a sec; if he loved me enough to do this for me, then I could trust him (in other words . . . . "and then . . . a miracle happens", like the cartoon I mentioned above. A guy is laying in bed having an existential breakdown and anxiety gives way to "faith." It happens every day. But I repeat that since religious experience is internal in form and substance, even though it "seems" external to our yearning hearts, it exists only in the synaptic firings of the penitent or the mystic or what-have-you. ). So I just asked Jesus Christ to come into my life and take away the barrier of moral violation that separate me from God and that relationship with him. And that's when I began to first experience a supernatural intervention in my life. It started small and slow, grew more powerful over the years, and I would have to say at this point in my life is the most intimate relationship I've ever experienced with anyone—and I have an excellent relationship with my wife, good relationships with my kids and my friends, but this goes far deeper. I'm aware of his presence with me throughout the day. I talk to him. He talks to me. (Really? Hmm . . . interesting anthropomorphism there - unless you want to argue that he spoke fluent American English.The next example of a miracle he offers makes me a little uneasy, not because I find it compelling, but because I think that someone is lying (albeit by omission :) somewhere along the line.
o_Ó . . . )
Now, that leaves you with something. I'll just close that aspect by saying it is the most fulfilling relationship I've ever experienced (warm and fuzzy, eh?).
So you got three choices :
Number one, I'm telling a lie to get my point across. But I can tell you, if I was lying about that, there's no way I'd be here tonight. I got better things to do with my time.
I could be insane and that's a live option, but I'll leave that up to doctor Shallit here to choose between "I'm insane" or "I'm telling the truth." [laughter] (Just two choices? Isn't that a grey-less, artificial dichotomy? Just asking. )
He doesn't even have to address this, but I toss this out because, as I said before—and I admit this—all you are hearing is me telling you this. You have no reason to believe it's true. It's the most difficult one to defend.
(I'll address it.
This is where we rub hard. I have no doubt in my mind that he believes that the feeling of euphoria and increased clarity and sense of tranquility that he and every single human being who has ever lived and gazed upon beauty with a humble heart has benefited from the encounter, comes from "without" somewhere. To our mundanity (if I could coin that for a sec), this sense of wonder seems to be the result of an external reality which is acting upon him/her from some abstract "above". But I think it is demonstrable that religious experiences are essentially nothing more than psychological events —extraordinary, maybe, but not supernatural— and are not external at all. It's as internal as it gets, in fact. Yes, the human animal does seem to have a psychological mechanism which emotionally seeks understanding of the cosmos it lives in and can attain occasional raised levels of awareness of some connection that ties us, everything, all, together. Even atheists experience this phenomenon, I think, a feeling of interconnectedness with the numinous aspect of existence, and they even find it an agreeable state of mind, a pleasant one. The problem is that, no matter how proprietary it seems, no matter how real this imagined "relationship" may seem, it is just a psychological event in the mind of just one singular person, triggered by whatever brought on this heightened sense of awareness—for me it's usually music . . . sometimes nature.
In other words, I think that all religious experiences are in our heads. Every single one. It is my sincere suspicion that all of our prayers are but packets of electrons flying through dendrites and synapses, basically. These flying electrons whirl around the brain, but they really have no means by which to reach some imagined celestial sphere "receiver." At least it seems that way to my eyes.)
But let me move on to the final one, and that's physical miracles.
I'll give you some examples:
I was raised on a beef farm out west and we had this one bull, very hard to handle; the only way we could do it was to put a steel ring through its nose and lead him around. One day I went to lead him to water and I untied him first to put the snap-ring in the ring in its nose and he immediately turned around and began to walk out of the stall and I knew that as soon as he gets his head out of that stall and he sees the cattle in the corral he's going to destroy the corral to get through to the cattle and he's gonna start breeding. [laughter] I'm trying to hold him back with all my strength. He weighs 2,000 lbs and at the time I only weighed 180. The rope was just burning through my hands; there was nothing I could do. And when there was this much left, I yelled, "God, help me!" Instantly, the bull was anchored— 2,000 lbs versus 180. I didn't feel any stronger and I don't think it had anything to do with me. If I had turned into solid steel, he could have still dragged me away. It seemed as if there was something on the rope between me and the bull but I couldn't see anything and I stood there incredulous, just savoring the moment. I had never seen anything like this before. I have no scientific explanation for this and I thought about it a lot over the years.
(Okay. So, here's a story from myown recent experience:
I am late for a gig and loaded to the gills with equipment, heading north on the 148, just before that last approach on McDowell. Traffic is heavy, which only keeps reminding me that I am running late.
The high-pitched rev of his engine makes me turn my head. I hear him before I see him coming from behind on the lane to my right. I continue slowly on, keeping pace with the steady but cautious jingle jangle of cars in front of me. Another rev and he goes by me on the right and suddenly the car in front of him brakes, but he's already accelerated and has no way of avoiding just touching the car in front of him with his front tire, which send him and the bike's rear end to raise up and come tumbling forward. I am watching this all in what seems like slow motion. Surprisingly, I hear myself actually saying, quite audibly, "Oh God! Please, no!"
To no avail, though.
A lunge forward, half a spin and he lands on the asphalt, face down on his upper torso, the bike following close behind and landing on him and continuing forward on as he rolls more to the right, away from me. I follow his movement for about two seconds and have to close my eyes as he proceeds to roll right under the rear wheels of a big-ass eighteen-wheeler.
Goodnight sweet prince.
If I believe that God intervened on behalf of Durston's prayer, just to keep a bull from going forth and multiplying and maybe causing some structural damage to a pen, then I have to ask myself why it didn't intervene on behalf of my profoundly heartfelt paroxysm, for something a little less trivial than a randy bull. Otherwise, he's asking me to believe in talismanic utterances as divine religious devices. That's not theology, that's "magic", as if the words held some intrinsic power of their own
Please..
But all that aside, just because Durston has no scientific explanation for this "miracle" doesn't mean there isn't one. Archimedes said, "Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the Earth." It seems pretty obvious to me that, while the rope was "burning through [his] hands" as he desperately tried to hold on to it, the metal or wood loop that the rope had been attached to and served as a fulcrum could withstand a lot more friction and tension than his hands and eventually the friction exerted on the rope and the metal managed to "lock" and finally with sufficient drag to counteract the slow moving large mass. Of course, I wasn't there and we'll never know for sure, I guess, but that's what I would have told him when he claimed a miracle saved the cows from a good schtupping.
I've seen truly amazing physical feats too, downright wondrous things—the most amazing of which was probably a superconductor demonstration right before my eyes. A little cube made of just the right beryllium alloy was suspended in mid air without the aid of magnets or forces.
It was sublime, surreal, surmagical.
A miracle, though?)
"I don't think that any of us had any idea how much anti-Mormon stuff was out there," said Armand Mauss, a Mormon sociologist who has written extensively about church culture, in an interview last week. "The Romney campaign has given the church a wake-up call. There is the equivalent of anti-Semitism still out there."
The term anti-Mormon is used to describe a person or group actively opposing Mormonism. It does not refer to groups of people who don’t understand the Church, or disagree with or criticize it. An anti-Mormon represents a more extreme category. For anti-Mormons, the existence of the Mormon Church is something that cannot be tolerated, whether for religious reasons, or political and social ones. And ever since the Mormon Church was established in 1830, there have been anti-Mormons. It is more than disagreement, misunderstanding or criticism. Anti-Mormons generally feel that the existence of the Mormon Church is detrimental to themselves or others based on religious, political, or social reasons. Since the establishment of the Mormon Church, there have always been anti-Mormon sentiments and even groups.
"The problem for Mitt Romney is there is a surprising -- and dangerous -- amount of ignorance about his faith among voters generally," ABC News political analyst Mark Halperin said. "He has avoided trying to educate the public to reduce the suspicion that exists [...] unfortunately for him"It's true; even when his political survival depended on it and he decided to address the issue of his religious inclinations in a nationally broadcast speech, it seemed to me that he avoided addressing his faith directly and instead spoke in veiled generalities about how one's religious affiliation should not matter. In the end, most Americans continue to see Mormonism as a secretive organization because he failed to inform them. It seems only natural that people would tend to have a distrust of conspiratorial (real or imagined) secrecy, of claims to esoteric "gnosis."
The book we know as the Gospel of Matthew's obvious lifting of the Mosaic parallels and pentaform structure is fascinating in light of this.
Still the above question looms.
What could have made Jews proclaim Jesus exalted above all names, even that of Moses?
I find it hard to believe that an "orthodox" Jew would make that leap. Ask yourself what it would take for a Muslim to elevate some newcomer to a position higher than that occupied by Mohammed in that worldview? What would it take for a Christian to supplant Jesus with some modern supposed Second Coming (though, notably, over the centuries, there has been no lack of contenders for that particular title, I know—e.g. Montanus, Haile Selassie, Hong Xiuquan, Charles Manson - jk :P )?
But . . . . if you'll allow me an anachronism here . . . .
A Jew-for-Jesus could have easily made such a theological blunder.
That's what all of this has me thinking of.
Follow me here . . .
It seems plausible to me that it (GMatt et. al.) could have been written by a community of hellenist initiates into the Pauline mysteries who were resentful of having been kicked out of the Temple for their irreconcilable (downright heretical from a Jewish perspective) views (the dating of this severance - that is, of the expulsion from fellowship of those who held to these mysteries - Jamnia, circa 83–90 C.E., sounds just about right when Mathew came to into being (by current consensus, it is right in the strike zone).
I bring up the contemporary Jews-for-Jesus movement here because they serve as a good modern example of a devotional community that has co-opted the traditions (though only superficially) of another pre-existing group to the extent that they view THEMSELVES as the true advocates of the tradition.
We admit that there's something very "non-Jewish" about proclaiming Jesus as the Übermoses. A Pharisee would have been really annoyed by this teaching.
Of course, one could just accept that miracles did happen and that they vouchsafe the messianic claims. But, instead of thinking of the early kerygma's allure as simply resulting from reports of miracles and apocalyptic preaching (history must prefer confessions of ignorance to invocations of the supernatural, or necessarily fall outside of the scientific paradigm—and besides, miracle workers were a dime a dozen in those days) it seems more plausible (at least probable) to me that it might perhaps not "sound" Jewish simply because it ISN'T Jewish.
Yes, there is some genuine knowledge of Judaic forms and symbols reflected in Matthew. These, however could have been simply a result of the close contact these proselytes had had for half a century with the Jewish host tradition. These symbols were co-opted by these outcasts who then proclaimed themselves to be the true, newly-fulfilled Judaism (having bought into the Pauline mysteries necessitated borrowing Abram's Bossom for it to work, after all), yet very quickly (amazingly quick in fact) these symbols were grossly misinterpreted by subsequent initiates. I have had several discourses with Jew-for-Jesus missionaries in which I noticed that the symbolism is not only co-opted, it is sometimes misrepresented.
I have been thinking it out for some time and this might explain why the texts utilize elements of Jewish symbolism and metaphor and borrowed forms while at the same time audaciously ascribing divinity to a mortal man. It is no wonder to me that these people got kicked out of the synagogues for their views.
Thanks to the theological ruminations and innovations of Paul and those who influenced him (wouldn't it be so lovely to have something from Apollos or from Barnabas or from Thecla?), this salvation was now not only available to all, but its implications essentially rendered the Judaism which inspired it more or less obsolete.Take my next example (just so Jew-for-Jesus won't be the only folks offended by this humble post . . . :)
The Mormons, in their sacred writings, display a profound understanding of Christianity. No? They freely borrowed the phrasing and symbolism of that religion which they claim to be a splinter of. Indeed, they felt entitled to do this as the true inheritors (by their own self-definition) of the gospel.
Can one deny that a deep familiarity and even understanding of Christianity is evident in their texts?
Oh, yeah . . . except for that bit about Jesus appearing in North America during his three days missing from Jerusalem after his crucifixion, while he was dead (the orthodox church line says he went to hell - the Mormons must think that North America must be hell, then, by logical reasoning . . . o_Ó . . .). Oh . . . and that little bit about how he was actually a brother of Lucifer . . . . Oh . . . and that little thing about men earning their godhood (and a planet of their own to boot) through piety and righteousness in this life. These digressions are blasphemous to most orthodox Christian traditions.
Are Mormons Christian? Well . . . their texts reflect a deep understanding and dependence on the New Testament, so . . . surely . . . . they MUST be Christians. No?
But I'm not gonna argue whether I think Mormons are Chritians (I think they're not— in the same way that Christians are not Jews—which is not to say I object to their existence—I wanna be careful to not be painted into an anti-Mormon corner) . . . Regardless, they co-opted the sacred texts of the religion which they splintered from and added their own teaching which misinterpreted those texts they co-opted. This paralells the early Christian situation (to my eyes) and I think this might be the kind of thing that happened when hellenist converts persuaded themselves that they were the "New Jerusalem".
As you can tell . . . I see a problem with taking for granted the Jewishness of the New Testament authors just because they utilize Jewish themes and symbols despite their idolatrous (from a Jewish perspective) exultation of Jesus.
To hold that those bits that are un-Jewish were adopted because the orthodox community was convinced that God had stepped into history to raise Jesus . . . requires an enormous leap. It needs a supernatural intervention for it to work. My model at least attempts to explain the un-Jewishness of the texts in a way that leaves the supernatural out of it (Yes, I am an unashamed naturalist).
The greek precursor of the concept we now call Ockam's razor was the "think horses" axion. In ancient greece, medical students were exhorted to think horses - not zebras - when they heard the sound of hoofbeats coming (my point here being that invoking the supernatural is like thinking zebras).
Again I must insist that most Jews rejected the claim of his followers that he was the Messiah, and, except for the small group led by Jacob in Jerusalem, who were pretty much left alone (and even respected). To keep insisting that the early spreading Christianity was comprised of mostly genuine Jews who only blasphemed against their god because miracles compelled them to is to beg a lot of questions, in my opinion.
Anyway . . . I'm gonna chew on this for a while.
