Sunday, January 18, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
The Jesus Project
Richard Carrier recently offered a fascinating summary of the events of the recent Jesus Project conference. Well worth reading.
I'll summarize two of the most interesting items in my opinion. First, Gerd Lüdemann, a critical scholar that clearly affirms the historicity of the person of Jesus, has concluded based upon his research that no reliable information about the historical Jesus can be gleaned from Paul's letters. He finds that for Paul Jesus is not an earthly person at all, but in fact is a celestial being. This is not to say that Jesus is a mythical character of course, but wow. This is quite far from where I understood Lüdemann to be. I think he even went so far as to say that Jesus was in some sense resurrected.
Secondly, Carrier briefly described a theory argued for by Dennis MacDonald against the existence of Q which posits that Luke as written is using both Mark and Matthew as well as the Dominical Logia referred to by Papias. The Dominical Logia reconstructed on this thesis would appear to be a work based upon the Septuagant version of Deutoronomy (if I'm understanding Richard correctly.) Sounds pretty fascinating.
I note that these points and others dovetail very nicely with arguments I long ago found persuasive argued by Robert Price. Price has argued for Luke being dated to the 2nd century for a long time for various reasons, and also he's championed Earl Doherty's thesis that for Paul Jesus is a celestial being. He's called a kook for such positions. Laughed at a lot. The tide may turn on this. I'd predict that his credibility will continue to improve. Not that I am qualified to reliably predict such things.
I'll summarize two of the most interesting items in my opinion. First, Gerd Lüdemann, a critical scholar that clearly affirms the historicity of the person of Jesus, has concluded based upon his research that no reliable information about the historical Jesus can be gleaned from Paul's letters. He finds that for Paul Jesus is not an earthly person at all, but in fact is a celestial being. This is not to say that Jesus is a mythical character of course, but wow. This is quite far from where I understood Lüdemann to be. I think he even went so far as to say that Jesus was in some sense resurrected.
Secondly, Carrier briefly described a theory argued for by Dennis MacDonald against the existence of Q which posits that Luke as written is using both Mark and Matthew as well as the Dominical Logia referred to by Papias. The Dominical Logia reconstructed on this thesis would appear to be a work based upon the Septuagant version of Deutoronomy (if I'm understanding Richard correctly.) Sounds pretty fascinating.
I note that these points and others dovetail very nicely with arguments I long ago found persuasive argued by Robert Price. Price has argued for Luke being dated to the 2nd century for a long time for various reasons, and also he's championed Earl Doherty's thesis that for Paul Jesus is a celestial being. He's called a kook for such positions. Laughed at a lot. The tide may turn on this. I'd predict that his credibility will continue to improve. Not that I am qualified to reliably predict such things.
How to Resolve the Palestinian Conflict: Surrender
To the Palestinians of Gaza:
What's happening today in Gaza is awful. What's happened to you for decades is awful. Your children were killed. Your wives and mothers, husbands, sister, and brothers destroyed. Your wealth has been stolen. You have been wronged. Will it ever end? I don't know. But it could. If only you would give up.
I understand why you weren't happy about the massive influx of Jews in the 40's. Muslims and Jews had previously lived in peace and harmony for centuries prior to WWII. Now huge numbers of European Jews were entering your land. Nobody else would accept them. Even the United States. We didn't want a huge influx of foreigners, just like nobody else did. You were stuck with them. Your land was taken. Believe me, Americans can identify with this. You should see how fired up some people get about a little illegal immigration from Mexico.
I know that it was Israel that violated the recent cease fire. I know they killed gunmen. I know that your people are starving and dying due to the embargo imposed since Hamas was elected. And frankly, I understand why you elected Hamas, and why you want to see Israel destroyed after all you've gone through. Americans understand that revenge is sweet.
Retaliation with your rockets was certainly understandable. And I know you didn't kill anybody with them, since the rockets are so impotent. But now Israel has retaliated back and killed a thousand people. They're dumping white phosphorous on you. They're blowing up your schools. They're killing your kids. All because you reacted to their aggression in a very expected way.
Has it been worth it? Are you still holding out hope that the world will recognize the injustices perpetrated against you and do something to stop it? When will you learn that this is not going to happen? Sure, plenty of resolutions condemning Israel have passed at the U.N., but what has that accomplished?
Here are the facts. You have sticks and stones. Israel has GPS guided missiles. You have home made bombs. Israel has F-16's. You have pathetic rockets that usually land in the street, hurting nobody. Israel has 400 nuclear warheads. Do you seriously think there is anything you can do?
If a group of foreigners approached my home with 30 tanks, 40 fighter jets, and a few nukes pointed at me and said "Get lost. We're taking your house." you know what I'd do? I'd swallow my pride and evacuate my house. I love my wife and kids too much. And frankly, I kind of enjoy life too. I'd live in a tent if necessary. I'd get by.
Say to the Israeli's: "You are our masters. We will do whatever you say. We will give you our homes. We will not involve ourselves in politics if you prefer. We will pay the poll tax. What rightfully belonged to us is now yours."
Is it right? Of course not. But at least you will grow old with your spouse. At least you will see your kids grow up. Life is not fair. Justice is not served. But you have no alternative.
What's happening today in Gaza is awful. What's happened to you for decades is awful. Your children were killed. Your wives and mothers, husbands, sister, and brothers destroyed. Your wealth has been stolen. You have been wronged. Will it ever end? I don't know. But it could. If only you would give up.
I understand why you weren't happy about the massive influx of Jews in the 40's. Muslims and Jews had previously lived in peace and harmony for centuries prior to WWII. Now huge numbers of European Jews were entering your land. Nobody else would accept them. Even the United States. We didn't want a huge influx of foreigners, just like nobody else did. You were stuck with them. Your land was taken. Believe me, Americans can identify with this. You should see how fired up some people get about a little illegal immigration from Mexico.
I know that it was Israel that violated the recent cease fire. I know they killed gunmen. I know that your people are starving and dying due to the embargo imposed since Hamas was elected. And frankly, I understand why you elected Hamas, and why you want to see Israel destroyed after all you've gone through. Americans understand that revenge is sweet.
Retaliation with your rockets was certainly understandable. And I know you didn't kill anybody with them, since the rockets are so impotent. But now Israel has retaliated back and killed a thousand people. They're dumping white phosphorous on you. They're blowing up your schools. They're killing your kids. All because you reacted to their aggression in a very expected way.
Has it been worth it? Are you still holding out hope that the world will recognize the injustices perpetrated against you and do something to stop it? When will you learn that this is not going to happen? Sure, plenty of resolutions condemning Israel have passed at the U.N., but what has that accomplished?
Here are the facts. You have sticks and stones. Israel has GPS guided missiles. You have home made bombs. Israel has F-16's. You have pathetic rockets that usually land in the street, hurting nobody. Israel has 400 nuclear warheads. Do you seriously think there is anything you can do?
If a group of foreigners approached my home with 30 tanks, 40 fighter jets, and a few nukes pointed at me and said "Get lost. We're taking your house." you know what I'd do? I'd swallow my pride and evacuate my house. I love my wife and kids too much. And frankly, I kind of enjoy life too. I'd live in a tent if necessary. I'd get by.
Say to the Israeli's: "You are our masters. We will do whatever you say. We will give you our homes. We will not involve ourselves in politics if you prefer. We will pay the poll tax. What rightfully belonged to us is now yours."
Is it right? Of course not. But at least you will grow old with your spouse. At least you will see your kids grow up. Life is not fair. Justice is not served. But you have no alternative.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Paul's 7 "Authentic" Letters
A Christian by the name of PaulSkeptic is struggling to reconcile the Paul of the Epistles with the Paul of Acts. He leans towards the view that the epistles do not accurately portray Paul, but Acts does. I wrote a comment which would support his view that some of the so-called authentic letters of Paul in fact are not genuine. I reproduce the comment below.
I should note these are arguments I learned from Robert Price on his webcast "The Bible Geek." What a great show.
Hey Paul Skeptic.
A very interesting post. As you may know, you're not far from the position of some skeptics (like myself) with these arguments. Of course skeptics likewise don't think Acts is reliable history. Most though regard at least 7 of Paul's letters as authentic and pointing to more reliable history. I, however, have become convinced that none of the letters were written by Paul. I'll offer below a couple of reasons why.
The first point to note is that many of the supposedly authentic letters from Paul contain this anxiety from Paul making sure he points out that he's writing with his unique writing style to give his letters an authenticating mark (I Cor, Gal, Col, 2 Thess, Philemon). Even if you accept these as genuinely from Paul this tells you already that there must be a cottage industry of Pauline forgeries even at these earliest stages. And we know that spurious documents similarly offer the pretense of concern about spurious texts. Bart Ehrman discussed these during a series of TeachCo lectures, which I've transcribed.
One of the ways of throwing an audience off the scent of ones own deciet was by telling the reader not to read documents that had been forged in the name of the author. You wouldn't expect a forger to say "don't read documents that are being forged." Well in fact this happens somewhat commonly in forged documents. One of the most interesting instances of this is in a Christian book written of the 4th century which is called The Apostolic Constitutions. It's called The Apostolic Constitutions because it's a book which claims to be written by the apostles of Jesus immediately after the resurrection. We know it wasn't written immediately after the resurrection because it reflects knowledge of later Christianity. Clearly this wasn't written by the apostles of Jesus. Yet within this book these "apostles of Jesus" warn their readers not to read books that falsely claim to be written by the aposltes of Jesus. Well, why would they do this? So that you wouldn't suspect that they themselves are forgers.
At a minimum Paul's concern means we must approach any text supposedly written in his name with skepticism, since we know at least that we already have forgeries in circulation.
Ehrman also notes that statements that include "I, blankety blank" are questionable. Like "I, Moses" or "I, Thomas, the Israelite relate to you the choldhood deeds of our Lord." Claiming to be somebody overtly was a common technique by forgers. We see this sprinkled throughout the Pauline epistles.
What about the texts specifically? Let's start with Ephesians. Critical scholars regard this as spurious because what it seems to do is start with previous texts regarded as from Paul and pastes portions of them into this new text and simply links them together with clauses. It produces these odd long sentences in Greek. I think the entire first chapter is only two sentences. The portions that aren't directly copied from another Pauline work are right out of the Septuagant. It makes really good sense as a Pauline pastiche rather than a genuine letter.
Phillipians is regarded by critical scholars as genuine. But note that it reads sort of like a last will and testament. Kind of with the attitude of "What would the great man have said on his death bed." This is a genre that is inherently pseudipigraphical. It is filled with irony as Paul discusses his last moments leading up to his trial, with the reader knowing full well what had happened to him. Oh, to know and understand the sufferings of Christ. And he hasn't reached perfection yet, but he strains on, runs that race for the higher calling. All the while the reader knows that Paul did suffer, and did attain the perfection by dying as a martyr. Paul says he will soon either die or be re-united with the Philippians, and though he'd rather die and be with Christ, he can't help but think he'll be spared so the Philippians can joy in his salvation and he can minister to them (which of course he does continue to minister to them by virtue of these spurious letters written in his name). So pregnant with irony in light of what is known to the reader this just seems to me clearly to be written by someone that just knows too much about exactly what happened to Paul, and he wrote with that in mind.
With Galatians and I Corinthians you have independent factions with rival conceptions of how Paul operates. In Galatians he's an independent maverick that got the gospel from none other than the risen Christ himself. As opposed to I Cor which says that he got the very heart of the gospel directly from the Jerusalem apostles. There are indications that these texts are patchwork quilts. For instance, what of sectarian strife? At the beginning of I Cor Paul knows all of the issues, what's going on who's involved. Later (11:18) he talks about how he hears there are divisions and he's tempted to believe it, as if he knows nothing of it. In one section women can prophesy in public (11), a few chapters later (14) suddenly they can't. Then you have these comments that look like retrospective statements about Paul's ministry as if it's over and done with. Reference to "traditions" as he taught them. That implies that this is somebody else writing long after the fact. Paul as a maverick missionary of a brand new religion is unlikely to refer to his own teachings as "traditions." Then there's the whole "I, Paul, laid the foundation here, Apollos built upon that and others will continue to do so." This again looks like we're looking back on Paul's ministry as if it is a thing of the past that can now be evaluated.
Romans implies knowledge of the destruction of the temple. Chapter 11 talks about how the Jew's table has become a death trap, and that the Jews en masse had rejected Christianity. Can this really be clear to anybody writing no later than 63 under Nero?
Another big problem contained in a couple of texts is stuff like what you see in Galatians 6:11. Did you notice, PaulSkeptic, that this is written on bold? What a strange way of writing. Since you can already see that it is bold, what is the point of describing to you that it is bold? This is a literary device used to pass off a document as if it is from Paul that would not be used by Paul had he actually wrote it. If you have a strange way of writing you don't within the body of a written document discuss the idiosyncratic loops and markings. You just let the exaggerated writing style speak for itself. However, if you are somebody other than Paul and you want to pass a document off as if it is from Paul you have to actually talk about the strange writing style and describe it. This way when a person that is reading what they think is just a copy of what was earlier written by Paul, the message is communicated to them that as originally written this letter contained Paul's unique writing style.
You may ask, how else would Paul communicate this to these people? Remember Paul never tells anyone to copy his letters. He would communicate his writing style by writing with his own hand, and anybody looking at the letter would be able to see it. By describing it in this way the forger exposes this as a literary device, which assumes the whole thing is fake.
I should note these are arguments I learned from Robert Price on his webcast "The Bible Geek." What a great show.
Hey Paul Skeptic.
A very interesting post. As you may know, you're not far from the position of some skeptics (like myself) with these arguments. Of course skeptics likewise don't think Acts is reliable history. Most though regard at least 7 of Paul's letters as authentic and pointing to more reliable history. I, however, have become convinced that none of the letters were written by Paul. I'll offer below a couple of reasons why.
The first point to note is that many of the supposedly authentic letters from Paul contain this anxiety from Paul making sure he points out that he's writing with his unique writing style to give his letters an authenticating mark (I Cor, Gal, Col, 2 Thess, Philemon). Even if you accept these as genuinely from Paul this tells you already that there must be a cottage industry of Pauline forgeries even at these earliest stages. And we know that spurious documents similarly offer the pretense of concern about spurious texts. Bart Ehrman discussed these during a series of TeachCo lectures, which I've transcribed.
One of the ways of throwing an audience off the scent of ones own deciet was by telling the reader not to read documents that had been forged in the name of the author. You wouldn't expect a forger to say "don't read documents that are being forged." Well in fact this happens somewhat commonly in forged documents. One of the most interesting instances of this is in a Christian book written of the 4th century which is called The Apostolic Constitutions. It's called The Apostolic Constitutions because it's a book which claims to be written by the apostles of Jesus immediately after the resurrection. We know it wasn't written immediately after the resurrection because it reflects knowledge of later Christianity. Clearly this wasn't written by the apostles of Jesus. Yet within this book these "apostles of Jesus" warn their readers not to read books that falsely claim to be written by the aposltes of Jesus. Well, why would they do this? So that you wouldn't suspect that they themselves are forgers.
At a minimum Paul's concern means we must approach any text supposedly written in his name with skepticism, since we know at least that we already have forgeries in circulation.
Ehrman also notes that statements that include "I, blankety blank" are questionable. Like "I, Moses" or "I, Thomas, the Israelite relate to you the choldhood deeds of our Lord." Claiming to be somebody overtly was a common technique by forgers. We see this sprinkled throughout the Pauline epistles.
What about the texts specifically? Let's start with Ephesians. Critical scholars regard this as spurious because what it seems to do is start with previous texts regarded as from Paul and pastes portions of them into this new text and simply links them together with clauses. It produces these odd long sentences in Greek. I think the entire first chapter is only two sentences. The portions that aren't directly copied from another Pauline work are right out of the Septuagant. It makes really good sense as a Pauline pastiche rather than a genuine letter.
Phillipians is regarded by critical scholars as genuine. But note that it reads sort of like a last will and testament. Kind of with the attitude of "What would the great man have said on his death bed." This is a genre that is inherently pseudipigraphical. It is filled with irony as Paul discusses his last moments leading up to his trial, with the reader knowing full well what had happened to him. Oh, to know and understand the sufferings of Christ. And he hasn't reached perfection yet, but he strains on, runs that race for the higher calling. All the while the reader knows that Paul did suffer, and did attain the perfection by dying as a martyr. Paul says he will soon either die or be re-united with the Philippians, and though he'd rather die and be with Christ, he can't help but think he'll be spared so the Philippians can joy in his salvation and he can minister to them (which of course he does continue to minister to them by virtue of these spurious letters written in his name). So pregnant with irony in light of what is known to the reader this just seems to me clearly to be written by someone that just knows too much about exactly what happened to Paul, and he wrote with that in mind.
With Galatians and I Corinthians you have independent factions with rival conceptions of how Paul operates. In Galatians he's an independent maverick that got the gospel from none other than the risen Christ himself. As opposed to I Cor which says that he got the very heart of the gospel directly from the Jerusalem apostles. There are indications that these texts are patchwork quilts. For instance, what of sectarian strife? At the beginning of I Cor Paul knows all of the issues, what's going on who's involved. Later (11:18) he talks about how he hears there are divisions and he's tempted to believe it, as if he knows nothing of it. In one section women can prophesy in public (11), a few chapters later (14) suddenly they can't. Then you have these comments that look like retrospective statements about Paul's ministry as if it's over and done with. Reference to "traditions" as he taught them. That implies that this is somebody else writing long after the fact. Paul as a maverick missionary of a brand new religion is unlikely to refer to his own teachings as "traditions." Then there's the whole "I, Paul, laid the foundation here, Apollos built upon that and others will continue to do so." This again looks like we're looking back on Paul's ministry as if it is a thing of the past that can now be evaluated.
Romans implies knowledge of the destruction of the temple. Chapter 11 talks about how the Jew's table has become a death trap, and that the Jews en masse had rejected Christianity. Can this really be clear to anybody writing no later than 63 under Nero?
Another big problem contained in a couple of texts is stuff like what you see in Galatians 6:11. Did you notice, PaulSkeptic, that this is written on bold? What a strange way of writing. Since you can already see that it is bold, what is the point of describing to you that it is bold? This is a literary device used to pass off a document as if it is from Paul that would not be used by Paul had he actually wrote it. If you have a strange way of writing you don't within the body of a written document discuss the idiosyncratic loops and markings. You just let the exaggerated writing style speak for itself. However, if you are somebody other than Paul and you want to pass a document off as if it is from Paul you have to actually talk about the strange writing style and describe it. This way when a person that is reading what they think is just a copy of what was earlier written by Paul, the message is communicated to them that as originally written this letter contained Paul's unique writing style.
You may ask, how else would Paul communicate this to these people? Remember Paul never tells anyone to copy his letters. He would communicate his writing style by writing with his own hand, and anybody looking at the letter would be able to see it. By describing it in this way the forger exposes this as a literary device, which assumes the whole thing is fake.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Neanderthal DNA
Bob Dutko has claimed that Neanderthal DNA falls within the range of normal human variation. Over at The Panda's Thumb Jim Foley explains how this is not true and also explains where it is that Bob got this information.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Good Science
Evolution isn't just an idea that sounds good to biologists. It is good science because it makes predictions about what we should expect to find in our world. Evolution says that if members of the same species become separated for a period of time, they may take different trajectories in their evolutionary development, depending on the environment. Here's an interesting photo that I believe is of a member of an isolated tribe called the Korowai. Go here for other amazing photos of them.
This photo is from a youtube clip, which explains why it is grainy.
This photo is from a youtube clip, which explains why it is grainy.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
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