More Conspiracy Nonsense
Poor Hercules, trying to fight the Hydra. Once he lops off
*one* head….
So I’ve received several emails over the past couple of days
about the breathtaking new announcement to be made on October
19 (assuming the world still is functioning after October 17!)
in London by “American Biblical scholar” Joseph Atwill (whom –
I have to admit – I have never even heard of, to my
recollection) In this announcement Mr. (so far as I can tell,
from his blog, he is not a “Dr.”; in what sense is he a
“scholar”? Is it because he’s read a bunch of book? Hmm….)
Atwill will “prove” that “the New Testament was written by
first-century Roman aristocrats and that they fabricated the
entire story of Jesus Christ.”
In other words – brace yourself – Jesus is in fact a myth. Has
anyone heard this before?
For the full story, go to
http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm
Atwill is a different breed from most mythicists. That’s
probably good and bad. Good because, well, you wouldn’t like
to be like the others. Bad because, well, you really shouldn’t
want to be one at all. In any event, here is Mr. Atwill’s case
in a nutshell, as described in this earth-shattering press
release (referenced above):
“Atwill asserts that Christianity did not really begin as
a religion, but a sophisticated government project, a
kind of propaganda exercise used to pacify the subjects
of the Roman Empire. “Jewish sects in Palestine at the
time, who were waiting for a prophesied warrior Messiah,
were a constant source of violent insurrection during the
first century,” he explains. “When the Romans had
exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they
switched to psychological warfare. They surmised that the
way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary
activity was to create a competing belief system. That’s
when the ‘peaceful’ Messiah story was invented. Instead
of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-othercheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to ‘give onto Caesar’
and pay their taxes to Rome.”
The operative word in this description is the second one:
“asserts.” I know sophomores in college who could rip this
assertion to shreds. For now, let me just put out some talking
points, in hopes that I don’t have to talk about them at any
length.
FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. If you don’t
belong yet, JOIN OR YOU’LL FOREVER WONDER….
Widespread
Misconceptions
about the Council of Nicea
One of the reasons I’m excited about doing my new course for
the Teaching Company (a.k.a. The Great Courses) is that I’ll
be able to devote three lectures to the Arian Controversy, the
Conversion of the emperor Constantine, and the Council of
Nicea (in 325 CE). It seems to me that a lot more people know
about the Council of Nicea today than 20 years ago – i.e.,
they know that there *was* such a thing – and at the same time
they know so little about it. Or rather, what they think they
know about it is WRONG.
I suppose we have no one more to blame for this than Dan Brown
and the Da Vinci Code, where, among other things, we are told
that Constantine called the Council in order to “decide” on
whether Jesus was divine or not, and that they took a vote on
whether he was human or “the Son of God.” And, according to
Dan Brown’s lead character (his expert on all things
Christian), Lee Teabing, “it was a close vote at that.”
That is so wrong.
There are also a lot of people who think (I base this on the
number of times I hear this or am asked about it) that it was
at the Council of Nicea that the canon of the New Testament
was decided. That is, this is when Christian leaders allegedly
decided which books would be accepted into the New Testament
and which ones would be left out.
That too is wrong.
FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. If you don’t
belong yet, JOIN NOW OR YOU MAY NEVER KNOW!!!
My New Course for the Great
Courses
Among other things, this semester I’m working on a new course
for The Teaching Company (also known as The Great Courses).
This will be my eighth course with them. The other seven have
all (with one exception) been 24-lecture courses, with each
lecture at 30 minutes. So too will this one. Doing these
courses is a great privilege and a terrific experience. What I
especially appreciate about them is that they reach many
thousands of people who may not otherwise have expert-level
access to the material covered in them. And I think that when
it comes to issues related to religion – and Christianity in
particular – that’s really important. We have enough ignorance
in the world as it is, and anything that we can do to combat
it is all to the good.
If you aren’t familiar with the Great Courses, you would do
yourself
a
great
service
to
look
them
up.
http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/search/search.aspx?searchph
rase=erhman
I myself have watched a number of courses in other fields
(e.g. The History of Rome, How to Understand and Appreciate
Great Music; Shakespeare; and on and on). They cover an
enormous range of topics, and they are all done by real
experts who are skilled lecturers. It is a very tough
screening process to get to be able to do one of these
courses. The numbers of professors who want to do them who are
not, well, invited are staggering. I had the *unbelievable*
good fortune of getting connected to them many years ago, long
before it was so tough to get on board. My point is that if
you want to learn about something, this is one of the bona
fide very best ways to do it – the professors are highly
knowledgeable experts who are unusually skilled lecturers.
FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. If you don’t
belong yet, JOIN ALREADY!!!
Colbert on his Hero O’Reilly
OK, this really is my last post on O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus.
It’s not much of one!
But today is the day I normally take
“off” from the blog. Monday’s are my day from hell: a threehour undergraduate seminar (“Jesus in Scholarship and Film”)
in the morning (today: students compared all the accounts of
Jesus’ Passion in the four Gospels, seeing if there were any
differences they thought were irreconcilable; we discussed it
all; and then we watched four movie clips – Passion scenes
from the 1925 silent Ben Hur; the 1959 Ben Hur; the Greatest
Story Ever Told; and the 1977 Zephirelli Jesus of Nazareth –
in order to see how directors chose what to include, what to
exclude, what to do when different Gospels relate different
stories, that sometimes really can’t be easily reconciled,
etc.
Great stuff) and then a three hour seminar (“Early
Christian Apocrypha”) in the afternoon (today: The Coptic
Gospel of Thomas – -when was it written? Where? In what
language? Is it dependent on the NT Gospels? Is it Gnostic?
What are its central themes? Can it be interpreted without
bringing an interpretation – gnostic, ascetic, Jewish
mystical, etc. – to it, or not? Etc. Etc.) In between the
two: meeting with a grad student, lunch with two others, and
sundry other things.
So, tonight is Martini-and-Cigar night!
Anyway, a member of the blog provided the following link to
Colbert’s discussion of O’Reilly.
It’s absolutely terrific –
as you’d expect!
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/429485/
october-02-2013/blood-in-the-water—bill-o-reilly-s–killingjesus-
Jesus as a First-Century TeaPartier
I have decided not to provide a full and detailed review of
O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus. It doesn’t really deserve it, and
much more of what I have indicated before – on which see my
previous posts. I will say that the book is extremely well
written and easy on the eyes.
It is entertaining. A lot of
human-interest material, which is both its strength and its
very great weakness, as almost all of this, as I’ve mentioned
before, is simply MADE UP, even though it is presented as if
were historical fact.
There is page after page after page of
that kind of thing.
This is not a research book written by a
scholar and his writing buddy — with, for example, footnotes
indicating where they got their information from. It can’t be
that, since almost all of the details didn’t come from ancient
sources but from their own fertile imaginations
And since
that is the main source for the Gospel according to Bill, and
since most of us know what Bill’s imagination spends its time
thinking about you may not be surprised to find out what he
understands Jesus’ principle interests to be (on which see
below).
Albert Schweitzer wrote arguably the most famous book about
the historical Jesus, and he claimed – and demonstrated – that
each generation of biblical scholars managed to paint Jesus in
its own image.
We have continued to see that since
Schweitzer’s times, and it applies not only to biblical
scholars who should, but apparently do not, know better, but
to popular writers about Jesus who don’t know better and so
do, in fact, even worse.
And so biblical scholars who embrace good liberal values of
social justice (often) portray Jesus as a proponent of good
liberal values of social justice; those who do not believe in
miracles (often) portray Jesus as a great teacher who did not
(because he could not) do miracles; those who are children of
the 60s (often) portray Jesus as a counter-cultural opponent
of the status quo; those who are fundamentalists (often)
portray Jesus as an early proponent of the Nicene Creed; and
so on and so on. It is often enlightening to read how an
author portrays Jesus and then to look at the biography of the
author. It can often tell you a lot.
So what about Bill O’Reilly? What’s his Jesus like? I won’t
lay out all the details here, but give a couple of examples
and more important give you a link to the book review by my
friend Candida Moss, who, on the basis of this review, was
asked onto O’Reilly’s show, presumably so he could grill
her.
She argues in this review that what Jesus was most
concerned about – in fact, this was ultimately his mission on
earth – in O’Reilly’s presentation was … get ready for it …
TAXES!!!
They were TOO HIGH. Jesus was opposed to HIGH
TAXES, and, the corollary, (Roman) government involvement with
the Jewish people, forcing itself up on them at every turn.
Here’s the link to read the review.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/27/the-gospel-ac
cording-to-bill-o-reilly-s-new-book-killing-jesus.html
In case you don’t want to read the review, here’s the kind of
thing O’Reilly tells us, in his own passionate words.
Joseph and Mary, as do most other Jews, live in fear of
Herod Antipas [the ruler of Galilee in Jesus’ day]…a
callow man who has never known want and who always
expected to e given a kingdom….He pays homage to Caesar
Augustus not only by taxing the Jews blind but also by
ordering a Roman-style form of execution for any who
would dare defy him…. Galilean outrage against Rome has
been building for decades. The people have been levied
with tax after tax after tax.
Antipas is nothing if not
a “lover of luxury,”…and the more luxury he needs, the
higher the taxes climb…. Actual money is scarce… No men
are more despised than the tax collectors, who do not
only extort funds from people with very little but also
publicly abuse and even torture those who fall behind on
their payments. There is no leeway. Those who can’t pay
must borrow grain or oil from the storage silos manned by
Antipas’s men. The interest rates are exorbitant — 100%
on oil and 25% on grain. And falling behind on these
debts means ruin.
Peasants are often forced to sell
their children to creditors as debt slaves or to sell
their home and work the land as sharecroppers…..
And so it goes, on and on.
The problem was HIGH TAXES.
(I
can’t read this without thinking of Monty Python’s “Life of
Brian”: “What have the Romans ever done for *us*????”
)
If there were something other than a historical novel (a work
of fiction) – that is, if it was anything like a book on Jesus
written by someone with historical interest – the authors
would provide *evidence* for their claims, at least in
footnotes. They would indicate that this is what our sources
indicate about taxes on Jews in Galilee. This is how they
compare with taxes elsewhere.
This is the percentage of
income that went into taxes as a rule. Here are some examples
of public protests against them, as documented in this source
or that source. Here is some actual *evidence* that Joseph
and Mary were concerned about taxes. Or that Jesus was. Or
that this concern had anything to do with his message. That
it had anything to do with his death.
But no, there is no evidence cited here. So how Is a person
supposed to evaluate these claims that the big problem Jesus
had to deal with was – like our republican House of
Representatives – TAXES THAT WERE TOO HIGH? Well, there’s no
way to evaluate the claim unless you happen to be an expert in
the period and know the sources yourself.
If you want to read a portrayal of Jesus as a card-carrying
member of the Tea Party, this is the book for you.
If, on the other hand, you want a serious historical treatment
of Jesus – and of Palestine in his time – I would suggest you
read the books about Jesus by scholars who actually know what
they’re talking about, including such figures as Geza Vermes,
E. P. Sanders, Dale Allison, and Paula Fredriksen – for
starters.
Some modern scholars have indeed managed to paint
Jesus in some image other than their own. These scholars are
among those who have: their views of Jesus are not all the
same, but they are at least *argued* and *documented* and are
not simply the result of a person’s fertile imagination that
truly wishes that the Son of God shared his own personal
beliefs and prejudices.
These are not scholars who have
written a book to advance their own political agendas or to
make millions of dollars. They are serious.
This book by
Bill-and-Buddy is not.
Follow That Star!!
In a post a couple of days ago I mentioned that if the wise
men were following the star to Bethlehem, they would be
walking in circles. When asked about it by several people I
explained that since the earth is not “fixed” — it rotates and
is in orbit around the sun — stars are never in the same place
in the sky, so “following” one would take you all over the
place. Here’s a hilarious illustration of what would happen if
the wisemen followed a celestial body to find Jesus. I have
borrowed this (no permission required, only acknowledgment)
from here: http://what-if.xkcd.com/25/
Acknowledgement is here: http://xkcd.com/license.html
**************************************************************
***************************************************
Three Wise Men
The story of the three wise men got me wondering: What if you
did walk towards a star at a fixed speed? What path would you
trace on the Earth? Does it converge to a fixed cycle?
—N. Murdoch
If the wise men leave Jerusalem and walk toward the star
Sirius, day and night, even when it’s below the horizon, this
is the path they follow over the surface:
If we allow a little theological confusion and assume the wise
men can walk on water, they’ll eventually wind up going in an
endless circle, 30 kilometers in diameter, around the South
Pole.
FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. If you don’t
belong yet, GET WITH IT!!!
Riled by O’Reilly
OK, I know I promised to read and review Killing Jesus. But
I’m not sure I can do it. It’s just so aggravating. Pointing
out its flaws is like shooting fish in a barrel. I’ll make one
general comment in this post and in the next one mention one
of the leading themes of the book to show why its so
problematic and then, unless I have a complete change of heart
or people ask me pointed questions, I think I’ll just let it
go. For now, a general comment.
I was one of the 4893 people who wrote a book *about* the Da
Vinci Code (Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code: A
Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary
Magdalene, and Constantine, 2004). The other 4892 people, so
far as I know, were religious – usually religious scholars –
who were afraid that Dan Brown might lead the faithful astray
by his wild claims, and for religious reasons wanted to set
the record straight. As an agnostic, that was nowhere near my
concern. My concern was that of a historian.
Brown begins his book with a statement about how – even though
it is a work of fiction – the fundamental historical claims of
the book are factual. And so, on p. 1, before the Prologue,
Brown states: All descriptions of artwork, architecture,
documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” I
didn’t deal with most of this in my book, just the documents.
But that was enough, as Brown mangled just about every
document (including the New Testament, other writings of early
Christianity, accounts of the council of Nicea, and so on) he
came within 200 feet of. And so that’s what my book was about.
I was concerned as a historian that people not have a false
notion about what happened in the past. Why should I care if
people have a false idea about what happened in the life of
Jesus, the life of Mary Magdalene, the life of Constantine? I
don’t know, I’m a historian and I care about these things, and
I think if we get history wrong, it tends to come back to bite
us on the back side.
FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. If you don’t
belong yet, JOIN, OR YOU MAY NEVER KNOW!!!
But in any event, Brown claimed to be writing a novel.
The
difference with Killing Jesus
is that Bill-and-Buddy who
wrote it do not claim to be writing a novel, with some
historically accurate background thrown in . They claim to be
writing a historical account.
Fact based.
Telling it like
it really was.
So what does one make of a passage such as
the following (while the troops are going out to Bethlehem to
kill all the young boys, to rid the kingdom of its future king
Jesus):
Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, King Herod gazes out a palace
window toward Bethlehem, anxiously awaiting confirmation
of the slaughter…. Herod sighs. Back in his youth, he
would never have stood in a window and worried about the
future. A great king and warrior such as he would have
ordered that a bridle be thrown over his favorite white
charger so that he might gallop to Bethlehem and murder
the child himself. But Herod is not a man of sixtynine. His massive girth and incessant medical problems
make it physically impossible for him to leave his
palace, let alone mount a horse. His bloated face is
wreathed in a beard that extends from the bottom of his
chin to just below his Adam’s apple. On this day, he
wears a royal purple Roman-style mantle over a shortsleeved white silk tunic. Normally Herod prefers soft
leather leggings that have been stained purple,. But
today even the gentlest bristle of fabric against his
inflamed big toe is enough to make him cry out in pain.
So it is that Herod, the most powerful man in Judea,
hobbles through the palace barefoot.
But gout is the
least of Herod’s ailments. the king of the Jews…is also
suffering from lung disease, kidney problems, worms, a
heart condition, sexually transmitted diseases, and a
horrible version of gangrene that has caused his genitals
to rot, turn black, and become infested with maggots –
thus the inability to sit astride, let alone ride, a
horse….
Is O’Reilly serious? Does he REALLY think that readers who
know the least thing about our sources is going to think this
is historical writing instead of fiction? That they won’t
realize that it is VIRTUALLY ALL MADE UP???
But, alas, the
frightening, or saddening, or aggravating, or upsetting thing
is that most of his readers – the ones who watch his show on
FOX –in fact will not know. They’ll think this is based on
O’Reilly’s presumably intense eight months of research.
If I didn’t know better, if I had never heard of O’Reilly, if
I just picked up this book out of the blue, I quite honestly
would think that it was a schlocky “historical” novel, a work
of fiction, kind-a like the Da Vinci Code.
Or that it was a spoof. If someone told me a TV personality
wrote it, I would have put money on Stephen Colbert, written
in character.
Killing Jesus is Killing Me….
I received my copy of Killing Jesus in the mail today and
started to glance at it. I know I said I would read it, but
I’m just not sure I can bring myself to do it.
The opening “Note to Readers” makes one’s heart sink. We are
told that this will be a “fact-based book.” Oh, that’s good,
the reader thinks: it won’t be biased but will be objective,
based only on facts.
Until you begin to read the opening
page of ch. 1
“Heavily armed solders from the capital city of Jerusalem
are marching to this small town, intent on finding and
killing the baby boy. They are a mixed-race group of
foreign mercenaries from Greece, Gaul, and Syria….”
Oh dear. So, for our FOX historian of antiquity writing this
account – the Gospel according to Bill – who is giving us only
“facts,” it turns out that the “slaughter of the innocents” in
Bethlehem, taken from Matthew’s infancy narrative, is a
factual, historical account. We not only know it happened, we
know which soldiers Herod sent forth for killing the Christchild (foreign missionaries: and we know which countries they
came from! I’m surprised he doesn’t tell us how many there
were and what their names, ranks, serial numbers, and dates of
birth were!).
Anyway, back to the Note to the Readers.
We are assured that
Bill-and-buddy-co-“author” have based their information “on
classical works.”
That sounds good – no modern, biased
accounts, but only ancient accounts will be used.
And then
we are told how that is possible. This is an actual quote (so
are my other quotes, but this one is so hard to believe that I
have to assure you, they say it!):
“The Romans kept
incredible records of the time, and a few Jewish historians in
Palestine also wrote down the events of the day.”
FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. If you don’t
belong yet, JOIN NOW AND YOU WILL BLESS YOUR LUCKY STARS
FOREVER AND EVER!!!!
Bill O’Reilly’s Jesus
Several people have (urgently) asked me to write up a review
of the new blockbuster hit, Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Jesus.
So, my short answer to the request is that, well, I haven’t
read it.
It did just come out after all!
But I see it is –
from the get-go – the #1 book (in the world!) on Amazon. I
will obviously have to read it: just as I have to read Reza
Aslan’s Zealot.
The latter I will be reading over the next
month or so in conjunction with my course on “Jesus in
Scholarship and Film,” since otherwise I won’t be able to
grade my students’ book reviews of it!
But I will not be
assigning O’Reilly, since it just came out and I won’t be
changing my syllabus.
I’ve ordered the O’Reilly book (against my wishes; I really
don’t want to “contribute to the cause.” But I obviously
have to read it) and will be able to give an evaluation soon
enough.
For now I should make just a couple of comments.
First, O’Reilly “wrote” the book with the assistance of an
author named Martin Dugard, as he has done before with his
other massively popular books.
I take this to mean that
O’Reilly himself did not actually do much of the writing. Did
he do any of it?
Maybe someone on the blog knows.
More
important, did he do any of the “research”? I put research in
quotation marks because it is not clear to me at this point
how much research was done.
FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. If you don’t
belong yet, JOIN ALREADY!!!
Jesus Position Papers
Several readers have asked me about the weekly papers that I
assign for my undergraduate seminar on “Jesus in Scholarship
and Film.” I call these “position” papers because the students
are required to stake out a position on a controversial topic.
There are no (absolutely) right or wrong answers. The point of
the papers is to get the students to think about a topic
before we have a discussion about it in class, so that when we
do talk about it, we’re not simply pooling our ignorance.. For
that reason I don’t actually grade the papers, at least in any
regular way. Instead. if the student has clearly thought about
the question, answered it clearly, and shown that they have
invested some time reflecting on it, I give the paper an S (=
Satisfactory); if they have not, I mark it a U (=
unsatisfactory). All the papers are to be two pages, doublespaced.
Here are the instructions for this term’s papers. (The
students write other papers as well: they are writing a book
review of Reza Aslan’s Zealot and are writing their own
Gospel)
RELI 070: INSTRUCTIONS FOR POSITION PAPERS
Position Paper One (September 9). The Gospel according to
Mark: Who is Jesus?
Pretend that you know nothing about Jesus, that you’ve never
heard any stories about him and have never read anything about
him. Now, in your complete ignorance, read the Gospel of Mark
1-10; 14-16.
Read the Gospel now a second time, and jot down the different
views of Jesus that the author gives. What does he call Jesus?
Who does he understand him to be? How does he characterize
him?
As you are reading, consider also: what do people in the
Gospel think about Jesus? Who thinks what about him? Does
anyone understand who he is? Who?
In your paper you should indicate how Mark understands Jesus
and how the characters in the Gospel understand him. How do
you explain the differences? I.e., why is it that no one seems
to understand Jesus? Or do they?
FOR THE REST OF THIS POST, log in as a Member. If you don’t
belong, NOW’S YOUR BIG CHANCE!!!