The Dilettante Exegete

Why I Am A Mythicist

2012-04-30T09:52:00.000-06:00

I had a rather startling realization perhaps two months ago.

I am a mythicist, though I doubt this means what first comes to mind. Not in the sense that Carrier or Price or Turton are, but in the sense that Thomas Thompson is. The distinction is important, but more on this below.

To start at the beginning I was once among the more loquacious defenders of the historicity of Jesus on the interwebs. What I lacked in eloquence I compensated for with tenacity. Constantly frustrated by my inability to make people see what I saw, I had only an academic appreciation that my opponents in these debates had exactly the same frustration.

This same shallow appreciation colors many of the current debates on the matter. It defines McGrath's polemic. It created Neil Godfrey's imagined dichotomy of "charity" and "suspicion" I'm putting the final touches on a subsequent post on these two in particular. McGrath needs to define "good historian" as something more than "guy who agrees with me," and Neil--or better yet everyone--needs to stop using the term "hermeneutics." They keep using that word, it does not mean what they think it does. I have, in fact, never seem the term "hermeneutics" used productively outside of a philosophy text.

This shallow appreciation produces what Doherty calls "colorful language" and I call "shameless rhetoric." It produces the shortcomings of Ehrman's latest book. What it doesn't do is produce fruitful dialogue. And it defined my own approach. And then I read Hayden White and Keith Jenkins.

Anyone who reads White and doesn't walk away reassessing the practice of history has either missed the point or committed themselves to willful ignorance. But this is almost a non sequitur. The huge majority of historians will never trouble themselves with questions of theory generally, much less answer White's challenge. This is shameful, and results in histories that are nothing more than a house of cards.

Anyone who has seriously engaged fundamental theory in any topic can no doubt attest to the epistemological quagmire one can end up in. Theory begins to handcuff rather than inform one's work. This was the situation I found myself in for most of the last two years. Which was unfortunate, since I only need theory because I love history, and I was losing the latter to the former.

Finally, I acknowledged that a truly unassailable historiography was an impossibility. This is almost a tautology, but knowing it is one thing, keeping it in mind without being crippled by it quite another. I am ill-equipped to develop a historiography from the ground up, so instead opted to copy the smart people. Or at least to use them as scaffolding high above the ground I would otherwise start at.

"Smart people," in this context, are historians with a method informed by theory, that is more easily defended than attacked. A methodology that is conservative, minimizes value judgments, and restricts truth claims to only that which survives such a highly critical approach. This is a short list of smart people. In Biblical studies, so far as I had read to that point, they were all named Thomas Thompson (I've since added a couple more, most notably Lemche, though not many). This actually isn't entirely accurate. There were other people who did smart things (Liverani springs readily to mind), but none who were quite as consistent in their "smart people"ness as Thompson.

It's important to note that Thompson's isn't the only possible "smart people" historiography, and indeed I differ from him in several respects, in some instances I'm more forgiving, in others (believe it or not!) I am even less charitable. But much like Thomas Verenna, Thomas Thompson has influenced my historiography more than anyone else.

Also to clarify, lest someone get offended, "smart people" is wholly tongue in cheek.

This bit of background is important for two reasons: First, in understanding any large change of position such as this, the background to it is important in assessing the motives and understanding the thought process. It is as important to know why I reject another paradigm as it is to understand my reasons for adopting a new one.

Secondly, and equally importantly at least to me, is selfish pride. I have no desire to be confused with the crusading secular. Insofar as epistemology can ever be distinct from ideology, I am no ideologue. Nor is this a decision reached rashly and without careful consideration of the methodology employed. Probably more than any other historical conclusion I've ever espoused, this follows from method, and in no way preceded it.

I'll have more to say on the historiography I employ in subsequent posts, though I make no promises on when that will be delivered. I have three children with a combined age of 9, after all, which severely limits my "wax philosophical on history" time.

Now, on with the important part.

First and foremost it is paramount to understand the difference between history and the past. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but in fact describe different things.

Real people existed in a real past. They did real things. They lived in real places, had real friends, real rulers, real armies. But that is gone.

History is created in the present. The emphasis is on the word "created." Contrary to the popular axiom, evidence never speaks for itself. It needs to be interpreted, and any history is a creation every bit--and probably more--as much as it is a discovery.

The aim of the historian is to create a history that closely approximates the real past. The understanding is that it is only an approximation, and all conclusions are provisional. For this to be meaningful, we need to have rules. Functional rules. Readers may remember my post some time ago lamenting the lack of rules in NT studies. If there is any conviction I firmly hold, it is that proceeding in such a fashion is unacceptable, and that anyone who thinks otherwise has no interest in meaningful history.

So with this distinction in mind, there are two questions we must ask on the historicity of Jesus. Does the genesis of Christianity (the past) require a Jesus behind it? And; Do our sources require an historical figure behind them (history)?

Ideally we should have considerable overlap between these questions--they should almost be redundant. If we ask if the Age of Augustus requires an historical Augustus, this question is functionally identical to asking if our evidence requires it, because our evidence is inextricably linked to to the time and place in question. The less overlap between our evidence and the past--the less our evidence can be anchored in known reality--the less meaningful our questions become.

We can only ask questions of what survives--we can only question our sources. If they do not overlap the known reality, then any question we ask of them is meaningless. Without such an anchor monuments are just buildings, texts just stories.

So is there any overlap between our evidence of Jesus and the birth of Christianity?

The simple reality is that there is not. Not unless we put it there. The gap is too large, the sources too unprovenanced, their creation too devoid of known context.

I'll note in the interest of candor that there is one possible exception to this: Gal.1.19. I have not read any interpretation of this passage that makes more sense to me than the plain reading of the text. Because of this, and this alone, I am still somewhat tentative. But it is nowhere near enough.

This remove means that we can't ask questions of the past. We can't know about the genesis of Christianity (which is where I diverge from the people mentioned in my opening sentences. I do not think the evidence required for an assessment of the birth of the movement--mythicist or historicist--exists). But perhaps there is still a requirement in our evidence for someone behind the stories. Even if we can't firmly link him to the birth of Christianity, surely it is at least a plausible speculation to link such an individual without a context to it? And the authorship of Mark, for example, can unequivocally be linked with the authorship of Mark. So do we require a real person for him?

Alas, even this tentative speculation cannot be allowed. The answer to the second question is a resounding no. That isn't my voice, but the voice of a century's worth of scholarship, during which every event described in the New Testament has been reasonably argued to be unhistorical by one scholar or another. To be sure, arguments for inclusion have been raised as well. This simply reflects historiographical assumptions. Criteria of inclusion assume positive results. Criteria of exclusion assume negative ones. Let them clash.

But remember what the smart people do: Methodology is conservative, value judgments eliminated, conclusions restricted only to what survives this. A real person is not required, not demanded, not even vaguely necessary to explain what survives. It is perfectly coherent without one, and this is what the methodology I described demands.

So, to get back to the start, I am agnostic on whether or not a real Jesus lived in the past. But I am a mythicist in so far as our evidence supports. There is no good reason to believe there is a a man behind the story. There is just a story.

History and Historical Fiction

2012-03-13T11:33:00.001-06:00

There is little to no qualitative difference between history and historical fiction, at least according to Hayden White:

[H]istorical narratives are verbal fictions, the contents of which are as much invented as found and the forms of which have more in common with their counterparts in literature than they have with those in the sciences(*)

This should be qualified somewhat, but can be stated perhaps even more simply: History is written to persaude, historical fiction is written to entertain. All else is form following function.

Lester Grabbe cites this passage in his Ancient Israel,(**) and follows this with several pages of discussion of postmodern criticism of historiography. Despite a too sympathetic nod to Evans' In Defense of History (1997), the discussion is at least reasonable.

It is perhaps worth noting that both the discussion and the sympathetic nod are symptomatic of a problem in history generally: Historians do not care about epistemology. Evans' book was well received by practising historians, who need any port in a storm to avoid the elephant in the room, but panned by philosophers of history. See, for example, Easthope's disgust with the volume, available online.

Grabbe himself notes this shortcoming:

In the end, however, one can only agree with the observation that 'the majority of professional historians ... as usual, appear to ignore theoretical issues and would prefer to be left undisturbed to get on with their work while no doubt hoping the postmodernist challenge will eventually go away' (Zagorin 1999: 2). This certainly fits the attitudes of most historians I know in my own university who seem to have little interest in the debates on theory. (p28)

After (not surprisingly) rejecting the postmodern paradigm (and, it should be noted, paying particular attention to the problem of subjectivity), Grabbe moves on to discussing some basic principles of historical inquiry. Most of his tenets are not only reasonable, but quite good, and I might have more to say about them in a later post. His sixth principle, however, should probably be split into two. Lest I rob it of context, I'll cite it in its entirety, with the point I think the separation should be made set off in red:

All reconstructions have to be argued for. There can be no default position. You cannot just follow the text unless it can be disproved (sometimes expressed in the nonsensical phrase, 'innocent until proved guilty' - as if the text was a defendant in court; if there is a forensic analogy, the text is a witness whose veracity must be probed and tested). The only valid arguments are historical ones. Ideology, utility, theology, morality, politics, authority - none of these has a place in judging how to reconstruct an event. The only argumentation allowed is that based on historical principles. Naturally, subjectivity is inevitable in the process, and all historians are human and have their weaknesses and blindspots. This is why each must argue for their viewpoint and then subject the result to the judgement of peers, who are also human and subjective.(p36)

Looking at the red portion, did you spot the problem? If you were thinking in terms of theory you may have. If you were more interested in just getting on with "doing history," you almost certainly did not.

I checked several reviews of Grabbe's book. Nobody mentions what is, to me, an obvious oversight. One which makes it clear that, despite his citation of both, Grabbe actually doesn't understand the criticisms of White or Jenkins as pertains to subjectivity. More importantly, despite explicitly criticizing his peers, Grabbe too only gives a cursory look at theory.

To explain, we'll take a look elsewhere for a moment. Imagine I gave you a paper with such a radically feminist view that we would, today, consider it flagrant revisionism. Then imagine I told you that this paper had been very well received in peer-review, despite what seem to be obvious problems.

Now I ask you to name the decade it was published in.

You would almost certainly guess the late 1960s, or more probably the 1970s. And you would almost certainly be right. This is a fairly flagrant example of what is generally a far subtler problem.

The implication in Grabbe's principle is that peer-review, conducted by reviewers who are "human and subjective," will ultimately create a balance. A sort of levelling off of the blind spots. And it might; for the blind spots of the individual.

But those aren't the only blind spots. There are also collective blind spots. Blind spots borne of context, a context that is extremely likely to be shared by the huge majority of peer reviewers. And those cannot be balanced, cannot be identified, cannot even be seen until that context is gone. That might be a span of a few years, such as our example. It might be a span of decades, even centuries.

We might suggest that a historiography that allows for this--that requires both peer-review and survival of multiple contexts (as demonstrated perhaps by longevity), but this would drop our list of established historical "truths" to somewhere in the neighbourhood of zero, and would suggest that what we produce today cannot be considered right or wrong by anyone reading it now.

Even this optimistic suggestion, in other words, says that Hayden White was at least functionally right after all.

(*)White, H. (1978). Tropics of Discourse: Essays in cultural criticism. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, p82.

(**)Grabbe, L. (2007). Ancient israel. New York: T&T Clark, p27

And Baby Number 3 Will Be. . .

2010-03-12T20:43:00.002-07:00

So, my wife had her 18 week ultrasound today, and we found out that baby number 3 will be another boy!

McGrath, Godfrey and "Assuming" Historicity.

2010-03-06T09:51:00.001-07:00

And on it goes. James McGrath has taken issue with another of Neil Godfrey's posts on the Jesus Myth.

I'll state for the record that I am not persuaded by the mythicist position, and think E P Sanders is probably the greatest living NT scholar. So I have some sympathy with McGrath.

I appreciate James' point (and even more with Steph's in the comments, I have always thought "assumption" such a terrible term here, though it's often used. . .just because people don't outline a full explanation doesn't mean they've "assumed" it). But there is a counterpoint to be scored here as well.

What other characters do we attempt to reconstruct in any detail based solely on texts? Especially texts that are all written "in-group," none of which are autobiographical?

Neil and I would probably disagree on what standard of evidence is required before we move forward, but I would concede (in the spirit of the 1913 Schweitzer he's been citing lately) that we can only move forward provisionally, recognizing the limits of our conjecture.

Even if we agreed there was an historical Romulus, for example, if you started telling me a specific act he did in the founding of Rome, with details about his consciousness while he did it, I'd laugh in your face. It seems preposterous everywhere but here. And even if we let you get away with it, your statement would be a lot more provisional. If someone replied that they doubt Romulus even existed, you would doubtlessly allow for the possibility, and acknowledge that your later conjectures were based on an earlier conjecture: That Romulus was real.

When we deal strictly with textual evidence elsewhere, we recognize the limits of our conjectures. But here we have none (still germane to my post Why Bother?). Not only do we not have to be provisional, we can suggest that all the gospels fundamentally misunderstood Jesus' message, and we know even better than they do what it was. While many critics would disagree with those sorts of efforts, we don't deprive them of dialogue, while virtually anywhere else we wouldn't deem to treat such speculation with a grain of seriousness.

As I pointed out before, we have no rules.

So, to get back to the point, Neil's probably wrong. Or at least should be more provisional in his comments. Sanders' may have assumed historicity. He may not have. He doesn't tell us, so we don't know. Some academics probably do. Some probably don't. But without an explanation we can't be sure what they've done, and can't be sure they've "assumed" anything. Simple decorum and charitability demands that we give them the benefit of the doubt.

But James is wrong too. What we do with texts is a lot different here than everywhere else. Not because we treat them differently--it's often suggested that the biblical historian is engaging in some new species of history. We can flatly reject that. We figure ways to find authentic information from texts the same way any other branch of history does. Sometimes with the same criteria.

But what we don't do is see the limits. We don't recognize the provisional nature. And (as I've said again and again lately), we build on people who also didn't see the provisional nature. The last guy's speculation becomes my fact in a sense we really don't see outside of this branch of historical inquiry.

It's not that we don't see any limits at all, of course, just that the ones we push are too far removed from what our evidence can really state to be of much use. But we still have an outer boundary, beyond which we pay proponents the most serious of insults: We deprive them of a dialogue partner.

Robert Eisenman flatly rejected hard science. Hard science he requested. Now there's an analogue to creationism. But he got dialogue partners. Baigent and Leigh, Barbara Thiering, hell, even Dan Brown. Truly ridiculous, crackpot ideas. That got dialogue partners.

Are we really going to suggest that an Earl Doherty or a Robert Price is so over the edge that even these crackpots are more deserving of engagement than they are? Because if we are, we're wrong. And wholly unjustified.

Here's the simple reality: Earl Doherty does very little that a Crossan or a Meier doesn't do. He uses the same criteria. He just attaches different (entirely subjective, the same as everyone else') weight to them. And by tweaking the weight--this criteria has more force than this one--he uses established methods to drive ineluctably to a given conclusion. That is how history is done, biblical or otherwise. And if it's okay for a Crossan or a Meier (as examples who rely heavily on methodological criteria for authenticity), the it's okay for Earl too.

Quote of the Day, Ovid

2010-03-03T09:09:00.003-07:00

No matter what you're trying to say, someone has said it better. Usually thousands of years ago. So germane to my recent post, Why Bother?, here's a gem from Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3:253-55

As the tale spread, views varied; some believed
Diana’s violence unjust; some praised it,
As proper to her chaste virginity.
Both sides found reason for their point of view.

Why Bother?

2010-02-28T09:56:00.005-07:00

Yeesh. Finish up the movie list later today or tomorrow morning, I'm only two months behind Loren

So, about a month and a half ago I started reading Questioning Q: A Multidimensional Critique, editted by Nicholas Perrin and the de facto mayor of the Biblical Studies global village, Mark Goodacre. For reasons I'll outline, it took me until yesterday to finish it.

A discussion on historiography on the FRDB interrupted me to re-read Hayden White's MetaHistory, which (in the sort of bizarre lead-ins that can only happen in real-life; and we hope to understand ancient minds?) led me to Statues in Roman Society, which led to The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, which led (by reference) to The Companion to the Roman Army (which led bizarrely, to a couple brief looks at commentaries on Samuel). In the midst of all this, I decided to do something I'd intended to do for awhile, and read the Aeneid through.

Something struck me as I read Vergil's work. The care he took with it is well-known, and often emphasized by the observation that his average pace is roughly three lines a day. The fruits of that careful labour are readily apparent, and the Aeneid is a literary masterpiece by any standard.

But I'm not the intended audience, so more than once I had to check references, consider interpretations offered by scholars of the subject matter. And here's the rub: The most convoluted reading of the Aeneid pales in comparison to the most straightforward reading of the Gospel of Mark.

I am implicitly expected to accept that the Aeneid is less densely nuanced than a work whose greatest literary contribution is slapdash Greek and the abuse of the word kai.

When you look at it, phrased like that, it seems absurd.

The reason for that is simple: It is absurd.

Hervey Cleckley's seminal work on psychopathy, The Mask of Sanity, provides an insight that now seems self-evident but at the time, psychology being what it was, did not. He cites a piece on the attraction of a drum majorette.

The attraction of a drum majorette should be obvious. She's hot, scantily clad and jumping about. But no, the piece contended, the obvious attraction wasn't it. The drum majorette protruded from the band the way an erect penis protruded from the body, and attraction to the drum majorette reflected our repressed homosexuality.

This notion, Cleckley observes, was accepted, cited and built upon uncritically by a number of professionals. That it's ridiculous should be self-evident. A hideously unattractive drum majorette would not be terribly appealing no matter how she protruded.

Cleckely's criticism, of course, is that there was a tendency to accept crap because it sounded good, and sounded like it was in keeping with the received notions of what psychology was. But it had nothing to do with whether or not it was true, nothing to do with whether or not it was critically assessed, and nothing to do with even the most basic test of whether or not it makes obvious sense.

While I would not suggest that Biblical Studies at large has gone as far as the drum majorette, I also wouldn't suggest that there are not a few drum majorette papers out there.

We have no rules. And consequently our interpretations of the texts are as nuanced as we need them to be, and we build them on the last guy, who also made it as nuanced as he needed it to be.

Which brings me back to Questioning Q. Or, more specifically, a paper by Eric Eve contained therein. In "Reconstructing Mark" Eric Eve takes on a test he discussed before online. Can we build Mark from Luke, Matthew and Q? The answer, predictably, is no, and even if one isn't persuaded against Q, surely we should follow the caution in the difference between what Perrin calls "Warranted Q," and "Actual Q." The former is exceedingly unlikely to be the latter.

But he provides a necessarily brief discussion on Matt.16:22-23. He plays by all the "rules," and develops a case from linguistics and Matthean redactive tendencies that we would have to view 16:22-23 as a Matthean invention. The case is solid, and it's easy to see how it could develop into a very full treatment. Even if we ultimately rejected it in an "International Mark Project," I'm hard-pressed to believe that everyone would be convinced of that.

Except the answer, of course, is wrong. Matt.16.22-23//Mk.8.32-33.

So he makes his case, so far as the IQP goes, but the implications go farther than that. Because Eve doesn't do anything that we don't do in virtually every branch of Biblical Studies. We try and find out if this verse or that verse owes itself to the author's redactive tendencies, if it was interpolated, if it is OT symbolism and on and on. Eve has essentially falsified the entire approach we take to the texts.

Falsification isn't inherently that big of a deal. Speculation is a necessity, not a vice, as a Beck quote I posted recently attests. I can't think of a criteria that can't be reversed, that can't be applied in at least one instance to get the wrong answer. It's the nature of the beast that we deal in plausibilities, things like "explanatory power" and "common sense."

But to be falsified so fundamentally that we would, quite realistically, mistake a distinctively Markan theme as a distinctively Matthean verse? That's a problem. That's a very big problem indeed.

So with the combination, Eve's paper and reflections of Virgil, it just seems so futile. I'm severely tempted to pack the NT in. . .maybe I'll switch to the early Romans. I know little enough that the subject still fills me with wonder and excitement at finding something new, not so little that I'm starting from scratch, and not even close to enough that I'm filled with the same sense of frustration.

The One True Best Movies of the Decade List (21-30)

2010-01-09T10:18:00.000-07:00

Whew. Too busy lately. My best of decade list won't be done until 2020 at this rate!

Coming into the second half now, and like Loren, I find myself looking at a lot of great movies, even if they're way down here. I mentioned in the comments on the last ten that it was the hardest ten to do, since there are so many great movies that shoud never be associated with the term "bottom half."

21) Inglorious Basterds

Tarantino is just so. . .Tarantio-esque. Nobody has more distinctive dialogue, delivers better soundtracks. The criticisms are probably all true: He does take other film's ideas. He is a movie store geek that got lucky. He also makes great movies, so that's okay by me.

22) Children of Men

Is it Sci-fi? Is it a satire? Is it an action flick? It's all three! A mix that made me think of Kubrick while I watched. Always a fan of long takes (it just seems to give a film a grittier, more realistic feel), I was delighted to see them used even during action sequences.

23) L'Enfant

2005 Palme d'Or winner. They sell their kid. Which is a bad day for everyone. . .maybe. The absence of a soundtrack results in a novel effect, giving the film a verisimillitude it might have otherwise lacked.

24) Palindromes

Loren and I both buck critical consensus by including this in the list. If Solondz doesn't manage to offend you here, you weren't paying close enough attention, as he gives his take on the abortion debate: We're all hypocrites.

25) The Departed

Finally Scorcese gets his Oscar. Not that he hadn't deserved it most of the previous goes (Raging Bull lost? Really?).

26) Synecdoche, New York

Kaufman's movies are always so distinctive, and always so profound. I wasn't as blow away as Ebert in his best of decade list, but I was impressed.

27) The Wackness

Hey, I was a dope peddler in the 90s. I'm allowed to indulge this bit of nostalgia.

28) Mulholland Dr.

Does anybody deliver better plot twists than David Lynch? In a lot of ways this is the archetypal Lynch movie, and if you watched everything else he'd made before this it would almost become predictable.

29) Adaptation

A stronger finish, and this would have made the top 20. Prior to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, neither Gondry nor Kaufman seem to have known how to wrap their stories.

30) Crash

Wow. What an intricate weave of story arcs.

The One True Best Movies of the Decade List (11-20)

2010-01-01T10:17:00.000-07:00

So we move down our list to numbers 11-20. A couple brief proviso's though:

1) The Ebert Principle

When looking at a great indie film or a great mainstream film, the indie film is to be preferred.

Heavy preference will be given to arthouse movies now that we're out of the top ten. One thing I always hate in these kind of lists is that they always name a bunch of movies I've already seen, and don't need anyone to tell me were great. Movies like 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days that score highly on Metacritic and aren't seen by most people are such exceptions, so the great indie flicks that aren't exceptions are getting their air time here.

If you're wondering why I'm calling this the Ebert Principle, take a look at Ebert's blog sometime. Guy can't say a bad word about an arthouse film. Even if it's a bad arthouse film.

2) I'll do my best to avoid indulgences

The nostalgia train for The Wackness being probably the biggest exception to this. I loved Star Wars Episode III because, well, I love Star Wars, not because it was a great film in the sense that Un Prophéte was.

Don't like the arrangement? My list. My rules. It's good to be king!

11) Man on Wire

Wow. This guy is seriously insane. "If I die, what a beautiful death!"

12) March of the Penguins

No real story. Nothing truly stunning about the cinematography. All they do is survive. And that's enough.

13) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet both give solid performances in what was the most philosophically profound movie of the decade.

14) Chop Shop

Ramin Bahrani is the best director you've never heard of. A powerful story not because of the emotions it evokes (though those help), but because of the verisimillitude. Bahrani painstakingly researched his subject matter. As hard as it might be to fathom, this is real.

15) Hard Candy

A stronger finish and this would have easily made the top ten. It seems clear that the filmmaker lost his nerve (perhaps fearing an NC-17?), and decided it would be better to lower a god with ropes. We all know how it should have ended.

16) Memento

You almost have to watch it twice to catch this complex story. Brilliantly crafted, like the story's protagonist, you never know what has already happened.

17) Persepolis

Animated coming of age story? Really? My skepticism was increased by the story's setting in Iran, where I feared it might fall prey to political correctness or a crusade. It did neither.

18) Batoru rowaiaru (Battle Royale)

Lord of the Flies in futuristic Japan. The game is brutal, the winner unexpected, the story compelling. Suspension of disbelief is well-rewarded.

19) Das weisse Band (The White Ribbon)

Big year at Cannes in 2009, with four Palme d'Or nominees making the best of decade cut. The second entry, The White Ribbon, took home the Golden Palm. It shouldn't have, Un Prophéte was head and shoulders above it, but it's a masterpiece nonetheless. While the rise of Naziism is the obvious context, the film's subtext extends far beyond that.

20) Gaau ji (Dumplings)

Fruit Chan's horror on the lengths we go to to serve vanity. A horror in the Edgar Allan Poe sense of the term. Do yourself a favour, watch the short on Three Extremes, don't trouble yourself with the feature length offering, which is just the short with a lot of filler.

The One True Best Movies of the Decade List

2009-12-31T19:05:00.002-07:00

Over on The Busybody Loren Rosson gives us a list of the Top 40 Films of the Decade.

Now, I enjoy Loren's posts on movies. His tastes are somewhat eclectic, his insights are great, and his enthusiasm for Ellen Page is the right and appropriate response to such talent.

But his list is. . .well, wrong. If I can lapse into my more primitive Counter-Strike persona, it is truly epic fail. He's in good company. Ebert's best of the decade is wrong too.

So here is the one, true authoritative top 40 list. We'll do them ten at a time, because I'm kinda busy over the next few days, and these type of posts can take awhile, if only for the link editting.

1) Un Prophéte (2009)

This didn't win the Palme d'Or because the panel was on drugs. It's the only explanation I can come up with. Not that The White Ribbon wasn't a brilliant film, but seriously. This is probably my new top movie of all time. If you only watch one foreign film this year, make it this one.

2) Cidade de Deus (City of God) (2002)

Raw. Visceral. Brilliant cinematography. I couldn't possibly say enough so it might be better that I don't say anything at all. Before this year it would have been number 1.

3) 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) (2007)

Probably the last great film of the brief Romanian Invasion, and handily the best. While the broad outline is almost a cliché (A story about X in Soviet era Y), it's nonetheless one of the most powerful films you'll ever see. Long takes shot from one angle give the narrative a more "real" feel, moving the story along fluidly in a sense many dramas seem to lack these days.

4) Oldboy (2003)

Gripping screenplay. The excessive violence moves it solidly into exploitation flick territory, and the story requires perhaps a little too much suspension of disbelief. The frenetic pace and absolutely brilliant cinematography more than compensate for those shortcomings, however. Brilliant. That Spielberg is making an American Oldboy starring Will Smith is an affront to humanity.

5) The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001) (2002) (2003)

I'm not sure that there's much to say about this that hasn't been said already. First American film(s) on the list come in at #5. If that doesn't make me a film snob, I'm not sure what does.

6) The Dark Knight (2008)

"Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn."

7) Juno

The only film Loren, Ebert and I all agree belongs in the top ten, though they both place it higher. The dialogue was fresh, the soundtrack quirky and as appropriate as anything Tarantino has ever had, and Ellen Page is--as always--brilliant. The one catch is that I wonder if Michael Cera will ever play anything that isn't a variant of "awkward kid from Arrested Development."

8) El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth) (2006)

Fairy tales as they were meant to be: grim, sordid, terrifying. But the real horror exists outside the dream.

9) Brick (2005)

Film Noir meets The OC with a smattering of old radio shows for good measure. The quirky dialogue seems more at home in a 1940's reading of Dragnet than a contemporary mystery set in a high school. This entirely bizarre combination. . .works. In a sense you'd never think it would. "Fun" in the sense that "wow, that was oddly genius."

10 Capturing the Friedmans (2003)

As we'll see in spots 11 and 12, my top Documentary was a tight, tight race. This one takes the spot for being a gripping narrative in a sense the next two aren't. You're obviously only getting half the story (a point made even clearer when watching the special features), but what a story it is.

New Year's Resolutions

2009-12-30T09:36:00.003-07:00

So, this year I've decided to set myself some clear goals for what I intend to accomplish--in the bent of the study of the NT--before the end of the next year.

1. To become conversant in at least one mystery school.

The aim, on the heels of my recent post lamenting the lack of familiarity with one side or the other in comparisons between the mystery, is to be able to carry on a conversation about a mystery school without reference to Christianity. A substantiative conversation, not a list of facts.

The Eleusinian cult seems the most obvious, because it was easily the most popular, at least in the earlier stages. It's also, at least to me, the least interesting. So right now I'm torn between Mithras and Magna Mater, though I'm leaning toward the latter.

2. Form a coherent definition of "Hellenism."

Far, far too often, the term "Hellenism" is used to mean "not Jewish." While I could give a broad definition of it, I couldn't give a terribly specific one--like indecency, I think I "know it when I see it." Which, of course, isn't good enough.

As with the above resolution, I'm not looking to become an expert. Just to be conversant.

3. To read at least 3 commentaries on Revelation

Pretty self-explanatory. It's a fairly large hole in my knowledge.

So, there we have it. My goals this year. What are yours?

Merry Christmas

2009-12-24T08:14:00.000-07:00

Here's hoping everyone has a happy holiday. My son's first (well, second, but he was like 2 months old last year so that doesn't count), and the first one where my daughter really gets it (she's 3). I thought she understood a bit last year. . .but now I see that I wasn't even close.

Though she's quite concerned. Apparently Goofy (her plush Goofy, that they gouge you for at the Disney Store because your kid will not possibly let you leave without something) has asked Santa for a new hat. She's not sure if there's enough room in the sleigh for a hat and the In the Night Garden toys she asked Santa for.

I have a sneaking suspicion he had room for both.

Merry Christmas!

Answering. . .what now? Or "Baptism" in Bull's Blood.

2009-12-23T09:05:00.001-07:00

Over on The Church of Jesus Christ we find a post on the usual populist tripe regarding the mystery schools and Christianity. While some cogent points are raised, I think the entire approach is endemic of the same problem.

I'm reminded of the cry of E P Sanders in Paul and Palestinian Judaism, for a comparison of religion that begins by first ensuring a solid understanding--in their own right--of the things being compared. With the exception of Smith's Drudgery Divine, I'm aware of no real inquiry into Christianity and any mystery cult that attempts to do this, and even Smith is, at times reactionary, and on the whole seems to me to have bitten off too much.

The problem, in the case of Smith, is that he discusses too many religions for the reader to really share an understanding of any of them. The problem, on The Church of Jesus Christ, is that it falls into the old trap of "yes it is"/"no it isn't." Which might help us catalogue some facts, but does nothing to further our understanding.

I'm certainly not about to suggest that I meet the description of the comparative scholar I long for, so instead I just wanted to touch a little bit on a cogent point raised: Namely the difficulty in telling which way syncretism might run.

In recent weeks I've spent some effort investigating the enigmatic rite known as the Taurobolium. It's frequent description as a "baptism in bull's blood" perhaps underscores the problems of comparison noted above, since in describing it as such we are "Christianizing" the ritual. A bibliography noting this phrasing would take far too long, but it's a conception of the ritual that makes it's way up to the highest level of academia, down to the outright layman who happened on the rite by chance. It's simply the description that best meets our post-Christian sentiments.

The "baptismal" form of the rite, as it's known to Prudentius in his Peristephanon, is in fact a quite late version, however. The earliest epigraphic attestation to the rite describes it as a sacrifice, frequently for the emperor or for the empire, a tendency that continued for quite some time. The cleansing or life-giving powers of the blood, with its 20 year efficacy, didn't appear until much later.

So, by indications of chronology and proximity, it is more likely Christianity that gave the bull's blood its powers, not the other way around, and while we should still avoid the term "baptism in bull's blood," there's a better than passing chance that it was the baptism of the exploding Christian movement that inspired the new interpretations. Certainly it is more plausible that the taurobolium was reinterpreted in the face of Christianity than it is that the taurobolium had had that significance all along, but nobody thought to mention it until centuries after.

Of course, in understanding the rite for its own sake, this just makes it all the more confusing. It was a sacrifice, but what, exactly, made it special? Differentiated it from other "bull-killings" such that it got it's own term? Clearly there was a concrete ritual involved, the full significance of which may be lost to us beyond conjectural speculation.

Quote of the Day

2009-12-14T14:02:00.001-07:00

Beck gives a nice turn of phrase on the necessity of subjectivity and appeals to plausibility:

Unfortunately, iconography’s bailiwick does not extend very far. As soon as we start to interpret the iconography, to say what it ‘means’, we enter the domain of error, or at least of potential error. There is of course a considerable zone of agreement in the interpretation of the monuments (for example, on the intent of the banquet scene, as discussed above), and little likelihood that the consensus of scholars there is completely mistaken. However, this clear zone of agreement soon gives place to thickets where the intent of the iconography is by no means self-evident and the inferences which are hazarded can at best be no more than plausible.

Supplemented by note 19:

Which is not a reason for not making them: in this field warrantable or grounded speculation is not a vice but a necessity.

Beck's field, of course, is broadly Classics and more specifically Mithraism, but his point holds as well here in the land of Dilettante Bible Geeks, and, indeed, pretty well anywhere in the Humanities.

Beck, R The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire, OUP 2006.

A Q-ristmas Miracle?

2009-12-11T17:37:00.003-07:00

Dear Santa,

I am writing on behalf of my friend James. See, he's a very good boy every year, and every year all he wants for Christmas is Q. I worry very much that he won't get it unless you can bring him a Christmas miracle, because I'm not sure there's any other way it can come. Please help.

All tongue in cheek aside, over on Exploring OUr Matrix, James offers some brief initial reactions to my post on Q and the infancy. As James notes, it's just an initial reaction, so this isn't so much a refutation of his criticisms as it is an elaboration on my proposal.

On the question of plausibility, James wonders if I've met the challenge, and whether or not I've found plausible motive for Luke's actions. So I'd like to just draw the reader's attention to my comments, both on James' post and on my own prior post on the topic here, where I've developed the proposed Lukan thought process a little more.

I proposed that Luke was sure three things were true

1) The Messiah would come from Bethlehem
2) Jesus was the Messiah, and therefore must be from Bethlehem
3) Jesus was regarded as being from Nazareth

We can add to this list two more things:

1) Matthew was wrong.
2) Luke, whether he meets the grade or not, fancied himself an historian, or at least wanted others to see him as such.

Those last two points preclude him from using Matthew's infancy, whether he had Matthew in front of him or not. Whether he's "Jewish" enough to get all of Matthew's symbolism, surely he would know that Matthew's story wasn't true if he heard it, or would at least be highly suspicious.

So what Luke "the historian" does is a sort of ancient historical crit. He takes the facts he knows, and tries to find out how they fit. They seemed to fit with the census, so that must be the result.

What we end up with here is Luke making a conjecture that is perfectly reasonable, given the evidence he had on hand. All he neglected to do was explain the deduction, which doesn't seem that unusually, given that he explains his thought process nowhere else either.

McGrath also notes the likelihood that Jesus' parents' names were circulated. While I can't deny the importance of familial association in the ancient world, this might score against Q, not for.

Jesus is identified as the son of Joseph, outside of an infancy or childhood narrative, three times. Once in Luke, and twice in the gospel of John.

If familial identity is so important, why does Luke only reference it in the same section that Matthew does, save that one reference and why does Matthew feel disinclined to mention it later? I'd propose the simplest solution is that Matthew made it up for his infancy, and had no interest in it after that, while Luke copied it from Matthew in his infancy, and didn't have it in any of his sources after that. The one reference (Lk.4.22) is easily explicable by Luke relying on his own notes. The point here is Jesus' humble origins, not the commonality of identification by the father's name.

In other words, discounting (for the moment, at least) the GJohn, Jesus is described as "the son of Joseph" in the sense of a common identifier, with no other clear motivation, precisely zero times.

Luke does it when Matthew does it because he has Matthew in front of him. That's the simplest explanation.

James has indicated he hopes to engage my post more thoroughly when time permits, so I certainly look forward to further discussion! I'm coming dangerously close to convincing myself I've come up with something here, so hopefully he can disabuse me of that before I start having to take myself more seriously!

There's still no Q in Christmas

2009-12-11T11:48:00.003-07:00

Ah, it seems like only yesterday that there was a bit of a row on the biblioblogosphere about James McGrath's post about infancies, Christmas and Q. And here we are about to have another look, during the holiday season, at the same subject. Qoheleth was right. There really is nothing new under the sun.

So today over on Exploring Our Matrix we battle Contradictory Christmases

I'd like to state, from the outset, that I categorically reject the reasoning that gets us from the sort of difficulties McGrath outlines to the existence of Q. I would argue that both the name Joseph and the virgin birth are not only Matthean, but distinctly Matthean. Luke knows the shoes are red, not silver. He knows Dorothy is auburn haired, not blonde. Therefore he knows MGM's musical, in addition to Baum's book.

We can't get around that by suggesting that because the story is closer to the Wiz than The Wizard of Oz they had independent red-shoed-auburn-haired traditions. The presence of difficulties such as those remarked upon by McGrath are not a strong argument in favour of Q, though somewhat ironically in many discussions they are the only type of argument offered.

That said, the difficulties still exist, and whether they point to Q or not they can still be a fun excercise to explore.

The first caveat I have with the general approach is the assumption that Luke, if he had no other source, would use Matthew almost invariably. Even Goodacre falls somewhat prey to this, in postulating a separate tradition that Luke regarded as more authoritative. Here, it seems to me at least, Goodacre has fallen victim to the sort of "cut and paste" scholarship he roundly (and rightly) condemns in his criticism of the 2SH, in postulating a lost source to explain a tradition.

While such a source may well have existed--I certainly don't want to suggest it didn't or couldn't--I don't think it's necessary to postulate to address Luke's break from Matthew. We might suggest such a source to explain why Luke says the things he did, but I do not think such a source is at all necessary to explain why he wouldn't follow his Matthean source.

I think we tend to underestimate Luke. To envision him little more than a copyist, while only marginally a redactor. I live in the twenty-first century, and I'm aware that the slaughter of the innocents is unlikely. Surely Luke, much closer than I in both time and place, was aware that something was suspicious. So whether he had another source or not, surely he was aware that he should be, at best, very cautious in regarding Matthew's infancy as authoritative.

Once we assume that Luke would have good reason not to put too much stock in what Matthew had to say in his infancy in the first place, it becomes much easier to envision him being creative with his sources.

So, the question McGrath puts to the reader is how we are going to explain why Luke has Jesus only in Bethlehem temporarily, while Matthew has it as his family's home.

I think the solution to this is actually simpler than it might first appear, and does not require us to postulate an external source.

Luke's audience certainly seems to be less familiar with "Jewish" sites than the other evangelists, his aversion to naming them is both well known and widely recognized. So it seems reasonable to suggest that they are more sympathetic, and more understanding, of "Jesus the Galilean" than they are "Jesus the Israelite."

So he sits down, the same as Matthew, with the well-established tradition that Jesus was "of Nazareth," but the equally well-known problem--the Messiah would not be Galilean. Since he has already rejected Matthew's slaughter of the innocents, and because his crowd accepts "Jesus of Nazareth," he still has to get his hero in and out of Bethlehem.

There was no slaughter, but there was a census, and even if Luke didn't know all the details of it, he knew enough to put it at roughly the time he needed. So he exploited it to get Jesus in to Bethlehem. Because they were always there only temporarily, it was equally easy to get him out.

In other words, even with Matthew open in front of him, once he has rejected Matthew's slaughter of the innocents--once he has rejected Matthew's Exodus--Matthew's chain of events isn't going to work to get Jesus in and out of Judea. So Luke kept the things he liked--"Joseph," the virgin birth, the birth in Bethlehem--and altered the rest so that it served his purpose and had some basis in what he knew to be historical realities.

Luke's version makes sense in a sense that Matthew's doesn't, because it sounds historical while Matthew's sounds primarily symbolic. Which makes perfect sense of why Luke tells the story he did. And the only external source we need is Lukan knowledge of the census. Which is far easier to explain than sources nobody has seen, and no ancient author has cited.

This is of course subjective conjecture, but unfortunately in this situation we aren't left with much else. Any question of motive is conjecture anyway, unless an author is explicit.

Five Things I Want to See in Earl Doherty's New Book. (pt III)

2009-12-08T21:49:00.002-07:00

More Engagement of Contrary Positions

This stems somewhat from a previous point, and is illustrated beautifully by reference to some of the same material. Even if one allows that Doherty has employed C K Barrett fairly, as per the previous discussion, one cannot help but get the sense that he has not read Barrett through in any event. So if he hasn't quote mined, he has prooftexted.

To see this in action, one need only look at the real core of Doherty's argument, the Argument from Silence. Doherty's argument is, in essence, that if there are occasions where we should reasonably expect a source to mention knowledge of historical (or alleged historical) events, and the author does not mention them, the author therefore does not have knowledge of them.

The reasoning here is perfectly sound, and employed in historical crit. all the time. Thus, for example, that Paul doesn't mention Peter's denial, when surely he would have benefitted from doing so, means he probably never heard of it.

But where we start running into problems is when it is questionable whether or not that expectation is justified. Many of Doherty's objections to standard readings of the epistolary record rely on Paul's term "gospel," and what he meant by it. To Doherty, "gospel" is Paul's "knowledge of the Christ," at least in most instances, and he bases his argument from silence on the notion that Paul's gospel concerns past events.

Which brings us back to the top. Because if he was engaging Barrett, he'd know that Paul's gospel isn't his "knowledge of the Christ," at least not all of the time (1 Cor 15 stands out as such an exception to this, which we'll discuss in more detail in the 1Cor series I promised a short while ago), and it in fact has Doherty's connotation at best only rarely (to be fair, Barrett would not agree with me. That's okay, we won't tell him. He would agree with me enough to make the point here). At the very least, Barrett and I would agree that Paul's gospel has as much or more to do with present reality than past events, mythic or otherwise. It reflects an existing opportunity more than how that opportunity came to be, except in broad strokes.

Thus, for example:

It is the message of salvation he is commissioned to preach, the announcement of the manifestation of God’s righteousness (see vv. 16 f.). Behind this usage, lies not only the common Greek meaning of the word but also its use in the Old Testament, especially in Isaiah where it (and particularly the cognate verb) points to the coming of God whose saving righteousness will bring deliverance to his people (e.g. Isa. 40:9; 52:7).

C. K. Barrett, Black's New Testament Commentary: The Epistle to the Romans (Rev. ed.; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1991), 19.

Or

The new, good news is that now, in the present age, God’s righteousness has been manifested apart from the law.

ibid, p69 (emphasis original, citing Rom.3.21)

Romans 1.2, the verse Barrett is discussing, in fact makes an appearance just outside Doherty's top 20 silences (He suggests it should be next in line, so we can call it #21, I suppose), but is largely there because Earl doesn't know what Paul's "gospel" in this verse is, or, if he does know, he's not telling us how he gets there, and why he gets there in the face of exegesis to the contrary.

It is a great danger for the modern exegete to read their world back into his sources. I don't think there can be much doubt that Earl has done so here, confusing the modern "Gospel" (capitalized even!) with Paul's good news. That Paul's gospel here has no room for a "preaching Jesus" should come as no great surprise, since his gospel has nothing to do with what Jesus preached. Doherty would have done well to have read Barrett's suggested reason for Paul's epistle while he had the book open, because even if one doesn't find it wholly persuasive, it gives a perspective that is often missed, and doubtlessly missed by Earl.

Put most simply, in Barrett's (and many, probably even most) suggested motivations for the epistle leave little room for Doherty's expectations. The argument from silence might work. This argument doesn't work here, unless Doherty knows an awful lot he's not telling, in which case he should probably tell us. Even if Doherty happens to be right, so far as Romans goes, he gets the right answer for entirely wrong reasons.

It's symptomatic of a large problem throughout Earl's book; a tendency to think things are self-evidently true, when evidence in fact states the contrary. We can find the same in his treatment of middle-Platonism, in his treatment of ancient myth, and so on. He cites sources that present the contrary (and, for the most part, and at least IMO correct) reading, but makes no effort to engage that reading. It ultimately creates the impression that he checks through commentaries for whatever verse he's struggling with, finds the reading he needs, and then runs with it, without bothering to examine the broader picture.

Somewhat ironically Barrett himself often preferred to translate with the more literal "good news" to avoid precisely the mistake Earl has made (Romans, p19). If he'd read the man through, one must wonder why he's not aware of the difficulty. Indeed, it seems we are left a conundrum where Doherty either didn't read Barrett carefully, or didn't take Barrett seriously since he implicitly declares it self-evident that Barrett is wrong without further discussion. Either event reflects poor judgment on Earl's part, and an overconfidence in what he sees as obvious that deters him from further investigation.

Busy Busy Week

2009-11-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy week going on. Out of nowhere. I'd hate for the readership to think that the blog has died again though, so wanted to give my assurance that this is not the case!

On Piracy

2009-11-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

I found a site to pirate Religious Studies ebooks.

I pirate Windows. I doubt many readers batted an eye. A few might have thought it theft. A few more probably thought "Good, stick it to Microsoft."

How about this: I pirate Libronix. All of it. I have, without exaggerating, 95% of all available resources on my HDD as we speak. I also pirate BibleWorks. And QuickVerse, thought I never use it. I`d very much like to pirate Accordance, even if it would have to run in a VM, but unfortunately I've never found a release.

I downloaded a PDF of Sanders' Paul and Palestinian Judaism 20 minutes ago (to be fair, I own the book). I have JSTOR access that I obtained by manipulating online subscription services. Probably 60% of my research is done with texts I shouldn't legally have.

I do so unapologetically. I also pirate games, though if I enjoy the game I pretty well always pay for it. And movies, though I'll always buy them after too, sometimes even if they suck. I don't usually pirate software, because I'm an OSS evangelist.

So why do I have no qualms about using such a vast quantity of resources without comensurating the developers?

I wouldn't have bought it anyway. They didn't actually lose any money, I'm just using it for free. The question is what I'm supposed to be able to use, not what they're supposed to get paid, because they weren't getting paid anything in the first place.

While for the serious student or professional scholar Libronix is a steal, for the working father of two kids in diapers the expense for the collection I have is preposterous to consider. My kids need Christmas presents more than I need cool software for what, ultimately, is a hobby.

As Jim West often laments, peer-reviewed research is prohibitively expensive, so I take very much a "buy what I can and get even more" approach. I can't justify the cost of Hermeneia, you'll have a hell of a time convincing me that that means I shouldn't read it, or that I should turn down an opportunity to acquire it by other means.

So if you're interested, and with the proviso that your actions in no way represent any copyright holder, send me a message, I'll send you a link to a blog with a snazzy collection of rapidshare links to fantastic books. If you've any kind of skill in beating protection schemes get me a license for Libronix 4.0

I hear it has Google fast searches.

Conservo-liberal-biblical-scholarship.

2009-11-25T10:07:00.019-07:00

Bit of dissension on the Biblioblogs top 50 possibly to go back to Conservative and Liberal leanings.

Jason Staples voices his concerns, and over on The Busybody Loren Rosson puts out a call for a "political compass" for exegetes.

One thing I think Jason and Loren really nail on the head is that it's really not that simple, and there's no easy solution for the categorization. Like Loren, I've been called both "Liberal" and "Conservative" in my conclusions, and either could be right, depending on how you look at it.

Though I think it was Loren himself (rather than his comments regarding Goodacre) that really nailed the situation on the head. Some time ago on Crosstalk (I think?) Loren noted that the simple reality is that the earliest Christians were conservative, and consequently, someone with conservative leanings, or who reaches conservative conclusions, is probably better suited to recognize that than a "quaint Bultmannian." (In a hurry, I'll edit links in later).

So, while I don't have Loren's political compass drawn up, I second his wish to see one. After all, I'm an atheist who's conclusions range from the hyper-skeptical to the prima facie, where does it leave me? While I don't rank on the "Biblioblogs top 50," that doesn't change the inadequacy of the categories.

Keep watching for the Doherty series, hopefully I'll have some time to follow up tonight.

ETA
Over on Hypotyposeis Stephen Carlson raises his concerns as well.

ETA Redux
The Political Jesus Blog weighs in on the issue as well.

Rod raises a decent comparison to the question of academic elitism here. Longtime readers might remember that The Dilettante Exegete was born out of precisely that dispute (Jim West, Michael Turton, and dilettantism), and my own distaste for it.

ETA Again
And now Jim West chimes in, and doesn't seem to see an issue with it. The trouble here is that Jim misses the caveat. He rightly notes that we all categorize things, and perceive them from those categorizations all the time.

But we also already have predilections based on those categorizations. A "hub" such as the Biblioblogs Top 50 should not play into those. If anything, it should discourage us from reaching our material with preconceptions in mind.

And the Verdict is In.

The Biblioblogs Top 50 has decided against the categorization. I think they got the right answer for the wrong reason, but here it is the results that matter, I suppose.

ETA Finale

So, for posterity's sake, here's the rundown on the discussion, discounting the acknowledgements of the final decision (at least to
my knowledge, if I'm missing anyone let me know!).

The Biblioblog Top 50: Categorizing all Biblioblogs: Conservative to Liberal

Outside the Building: Conservative or Liberal? Why Biblioblogs Should Not be Labeled

Hypotyposeis: Uh-oh: Redoing the Ill-Considered Attempt to Classify Biblioblogs as Liberal/Conservative

The Busybody: "Liberal" and "Conservative" Labels

Dr Jim West: They`re All Stirred Up Now

kata ta biblia: The Conservative-Liberal Continuum of Blogging (Again)

Political Jesus: Is This a Liberal or Conservative Biblioblog?

NT/History Blog: Opinions I Got 'Em

PEJE IESOUS: If You Label Me You Negate Me

Chromium (Chrome) OS

2009-11-22T12:54:00.006-07:00

Out with the Biblical and in with the Geeky for today.

For anyone who doesn't already know, Google is attempting to build a Netbook operating system,a linux distribution where the UI is the chrome browser, and the apps exist in the cloud.

The Chromium Project Homepage recently put up the (very beta) source code for developers to see what is offered. Get it here

Out of the gate seems too bloated. I can't help but wonder if there isn't more that could be stripped, or if there are more features coming.

A couple people indicated to me that they couldn't get it running in VMWare, and it would only start in VirtualBox. Since I know one of them was using Windows, I'll have to assume they both were and do what comes naturally: Blame Redmond. Because here it fired up like a dream (VMWare Workstation 7), as the screenshot attests.

The login, as I'm sure you can see, is pretty straightforward. What might not be so obvious is that you don't create a local user. Sign in is done through your Google account. We're now officially in the cloud.

A local account still exists, in the event of network difficulties, but won't do you much good beyond trouble-shooting.

One thing that aggravated me here was the absence of a mouse pointer on the login screen. That in itself wouldn't be so bad, except Shift+Tab won't move you to the previous field either. In the event of a username typo, you have to go through with the bad login to get another crack at it. Of course, that issue doesn't exist if you're using a netbook, and the OS is made for netbooks, not VMs, so it's more an annoyance than a real caveat.

Once you're logged in your looking at the Chromium (unbranded Chrome) browser. DNS is horrible. It's a bug in Ubuntu (linked to the avahi daemon, if memory serves), easily worked around by installing the pdns-recursor package. I'd hoped an OS built around a browser--based on Ubuntu or not--would have a cure for this ailment, but it doesn't. More time is spent resolving hosts than ever should be.

Once your up though, you're greeted with a tab opening to the Google homepage. You'll notice the logo in the top left is white rather than the traditional Google Chrome colors. That simply reflects that this is Chromium--unbranded Chrome.

Also missing, for anyone who's seen the screenshots on the Chromium page, are the quick tabs for GMail, Google Docs and Google Calendar.

Dissapointing as well is the drop menu (well, smaller tab creating a drop menu effect) seen on the Chromium page is absent here. Instead we find a full tab with a list of programs (conspicuously absent as well is the notepad application).

Tasks either open up in a Javascript Window at the bottom of the browser, or in a new tab, depending on app. When Chromium first debuted I though the new process for each tab was the stupidest thing I'd ever seen, useful only for debuggers. Now, of course, it's obvious that they were just so far ahead of the curve I couldn't see them.

CTRL+ALT+T drops you down to the terminal, which will have sudo privilleges (be sure to set the password as directed on the build instructions!). uname -a returns
Linux localhost 2.6.30-chromeos-intel-menlow #1 SMP $Date i686 GNU/Linux

The root file system is mounted read-only, but with sudo access it's easy enough just to remount it as +rw and remove the dpkg lock. Haven't had a chance to see what, if anything, you can trick it into installing yet, but I don't imagine it'll be much, and nor should it be. It's an OS for the cloud. /etc/apt/sources.list is empty other than local sources.

Rather than fill the blog up with the output of fun stuff like dpkg -l or df -a, I threw together a little video of Chromium in action.

At this point it's not even so much a beta as it is a proof of concept. It's boot is lightning fast, but after that it's somewhat sluggish (even when running from an SD card installation, rather than the VM). You're not going to be putting it on your NetBook tomorrow, but there seems to be no escaping the fact that this is the future.

Is 1 Corinthians 15 Pauline?

2009-11-21T14:32:00.003-07:00

The creedal confession given in 1 Cor 15 has always seemed a bit off to me. It seems pretty clearly a break in topic from 1 Cor 14, but lacks the markers given elsewhere for such strong breaks (eg 7.1). The doctrinal dispute implied (There is no resurrection!) seems somewhat odd in the light of 6.14. Paul's response to food laws only works if there is agreement on that response. If there isn't agreement, we might expect Paul to have his response a little more ready; 6:14 is a long, long way from 15. 15 opens telling the Corinthians that Paul is "informing" them of something they presumably already know. Doubtless Paul has already "informed" them, and even without speculation of what Paul's preaching consisted of, we can safely assert that he "informed" them based on 6.14 (on the difficulty of the verb here see TDNT 1:718, the difficulty is substantially resolved here if Paul didn't write it). Perhaps most importantly, it describes Paul's "gospel" as almost an exclusively past event. Which is markedly different from the more generally Pauline use of it as a present reality that extends into the future.

While commentators have noticed all of these irregularities, of course (I'm but a dilettante, you don't think I'm coming up with these on my own, do you?!), there hasn't been any real inquiry (as near as I can find) into the possibility that 1Cor 15 isn't authentic. While the possibility has been raised that it represents a different letter, I'm unaware of any serious look at the possibility that it is not Pauline. Robert Price wrote a brief piece on the possibility, but it is rather standard Price fare--lofty rhetoric, but no clothes on the emperor, it's a look, but calling it a "serious" look is probably more generous than we should be. The piece might raise an eyebrow, it's unlikely to win many converts.

I'd venture the reason for this is two-fold: Firstly, largely by necessity there is a general reluctance to question the manuscript evidence in the case of the Paulines. We have to start with the assumption that the manuscripts are telling us the truth. The burden, of course, rests on the one claiming interpolation, and it is a lofty burden to bear.

The second reason is that it provides such a nice, convenient definition of what it was to be a member of the burgeoning Christian movement. We can handily point to it and declare that an early Christian is someone who believes that, for, "I or they, so do we preach, and so have you believed."

So, with the culmination of my five brief points on Doherty's book tomorrow or the next day, I think it might be an interesting exercise to see where the evidence takes us if we look seriously at the possibility. I'm suspicious of the passage, but not convinced in either direction, so my conclusion may well surprise myself more than anyone else.

Five Things I Want to See in Earl Doherty's New Book. (pt II)

2009-11-20T14:33:00.003-07:00

We continue our series with the second on the list of five things I'd like to see (but probably won't, since I'm increasingly disinclined to read the book. . .it might be more apt to call this 5 caveats around Doherty's argument and argumentation)

Less reliance on Authority

The best known example of this tendency is probably Doherty's suggested translation of kata sarka and en sarki. Distressingly little is offered in the way of genuine argument in favour of the translation, simply that it could be "useful" and that C K Barrett "suggested" it. In Doherty's defense, he's expanded on this a bit since then, both in discussions online and on his website, but in his book the absence of elaboration is disappointing.

Most of the discussion online has centered around whether or not Earl has quote mined here (he has), but even if we allow that Earl is using Barrett fairly, if I say "Then Barrett's wrong too," then what? Barrett doesn't argue for Doherty, that much everyone agrees on, and Doherty doesn't offer much in the way of argument for himself, other than the distinct possibility that it's a distinct possibility. How do we know that? Barrett says so!

I can't help but think a coherent argument could be pieced together (Clement in particular offers a nice passage that could be used), and while I'm not sure if it could be convincing or not, it's a sight better than what's offered now, which is marginally more than nothing.

If we suggest that kai be rendered "and," we're on pretty firm ground, and could casually point to any one of a hundred sources and call it good. But when we suggest "according to the flesh" represents an Aristotlean sphere, we should probably back that up. Extensively.

Another example can be found in Doherty's response to my argument on 2 Peter mentioned below. Rather than address the argument that the transfiguration represents Markan invention, Doherty casually points to Koester, and suggests that since "even Koester" thinks it is independent, this is sufficient. It isn't. Koester doesn't address the arguments I raised (or if he does, he doesn't in the cite Earl provided), and consequently, from my position, that just means he's wrong too.

He seems to approach some subjects with the misguided notion that it's enough to cite sources with conclusions he needs, without engaging the arguments for or against his position. The end result is a piece that is applauded by those already sympathetic, but does nothing to convince those opposed.

Five Things I Want to See in Earl Doherty's New Book. (pt I)

2009-11-20T11:42:00.006-07:00

So Earl Doherty has finally put out his "second revision" of The Jesus Puzzle, though given both the new title and the fact that it has ballooned to 800 some pages, "second revision" is probably a poor choice of words. It's a new book.

So what would I most like to see?

Less rhetoric.

Readers might recall a pair of posts here awhile ago dealing with the question of 2 Peter's knowledge of Mark's gospel. It addressed Doherty's assertions regarding the term "delow" as being a "revelatory verb." Doherty withdrew the certainty of his wording in discussion (though it still stands on his site), but downplayed as nothing more than "colorful language."

In similar fashion, in The Jesus Puzzle he makes the bold assertion that the lack of artefact veneration is "perhaps the single strongest" piece of evidence in his favour (p 75). Except that history tells us a different story: Artefact veneration was the exception, not the rule, and his expectation is anachronistic. In correspondence he withdrew that assertion as well, demoting it to "another piece." The demotion is still undue--it's not a "piece" of anything--but at least it's more reasonable. The phrasing was apparently just more color.

The problem with this "colorful language" is that it always speaks to a degree of certainty, or a strength of evidence that overstates his case. The popular reader (Doherty's self-described target audience) doesn't know if he's presenting delow properly. They don't know how common artefact veneration was. They don't know that Doherty's misrepresenting the evidence, even if unintentionally.

I'll grant that it's probably accidental, and that 'colorful language' results in inaccurate presentation. But it's certainly easy to see how someone less generous might prefer the term "disingenuous" or even "dishonest" in place of "colorful."

Quote of the Day: Sanders on Righteousness

2008-08-15T07:30:00.004-06:00

Just read a snazzy quote by E P Sanders on the question of justification, it's a long one, but worth the read. Sanders eloquently captures what I've (even on this blog) spent thousands of words to explain half as well:

The sectarians emphasized (1) that humans were worthless bits of nothing and depended absolutely on God’s grace, and (2) that they were capable of becoming and remaining perfect. These statements are more radical than Josephus’, but they are not fundamentally different.

The world is still full of people who will focus on one of these themes, usually human effort in attaining perfection, and conclude that the sectarians in particular and Jews in general believed in the sort of meritorious achievement that is called legalistic self-righteousness. And they will maintain that holding this position excludes reliance on God’s goodness and mercy. Scholars who work in the area of Bible and related topics are often fixated on the kind of dogmatic consistency that seldom appears in real life: they think that people who believed in human effort and moral achievement must have renounced grace. Ancient Jewish groups, just like modern Jewish and Christian groups, had diverse religious thoughts and practices. To this day, when Jews or Christians pray to God, they thank him for calling them to follow him and for giving them the strength and ability to live as they should, and they recognize that in comparison to God humans are weak creatures who must rely on the strength and goodness of God. Yet when these same people falter, they do not blame God, they blame themselves. They seek to return to the path of righteousness, and they know that they must exert effort to do so. Humans are dependent on grace and they are accountable for their deeds. This is a common and in fact a virtually universal view in both Judaism and Christianity, and it is puzzling that many Christian scholars who accept both aspects of religion in their own lives believe that in the ancient world these were mutually exclusive alternatives. They are simply different perspectives that arise in slightly different circumstances. One set of thoughts arises in prayer or meditation, the other in considering the practicalities and difficulties of daily life. The two can combine in one sentence, as in this passage from the Hymns: ‘No man can be righteous in your judgment or [innocent] in your trial, though one man may be more righteous than another’ (1QH 9:14f.).

E P Sanders, The Dead Sea Sect and Other Jews: Commonalities, Overlaps and Differences in Lim, T. H., Hurtado, L. W., Auld, A. G., & Jack, A. M. (2004). The Dead Sea scrolls in their historical context. (31). London; New York: T&T Clark.

RIP Bobby Fischer

2008-01-18T09:56:00.000-07:00

Chess legend Bobby Fischer passed away today at 64 in Iceland. Cause of death is, at this point, undisclosed.

RIP