The "virgin birth" of Perseus

The Egyptian Neith’s literally spontaneous, totally virginal birthing of the God Ra, for example, well known across the Empire at the time the Gospels were written, had already likewise inspired attributing magical insemination by spiritual forces in other virgin goddesses, such as Danaë, inseminated by God’s golden rain, or Olympias, inseminated by God’s celestial bolts, or Nana, inseminated by touching a magical almond. Which adaptations are not meaningfully different from God’s insemination of Mary by a magical fluid called the Holy Spirit. She was “found with child by the Holy Spirit” (ek pneumatos hagiou: Matthew 1:18), as even said by the Lord’s angel to Joseph (in Matthew 1:20), or to Mary (in Luke 1:35): “the Holy Spirit shall come on thee” (epeleusetai epi se) “and the power of the Most High shall cover you” (episkiasei soi) and that’s why “the Holy Thing you give birth to” will be “called the Son of God.” The obsessive removal of any literal implication of sex is the Jewish addition to the adopted mytheme. Yet even that had precedent—in Egypt’s Ra, most clearly, a culture neighboring Judea’s; but even in Olympias, where a bolt of lightning is not in ancient religious conception any meaningfully different from a magical dove flying into Jesus. Either way, it’s just a manifestation of “the power of the Most High” entering in to transform the blessed. And when the one entered is a virgin, and remains so even unto birth (as with Danaë and Nana), the parallel is sufficiently complete.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13890

But even the absence of sex is attested in pagan mythology. Most famously, in the case of Perseus, a golden shower (drops of gold falling from the ceiling into his mother’s vagina) is far closer to Mary being overshadowed by the Holy Spirit (just as magical a substance, which just as surely went into her womb to impregnate her).

Perseus was most famously conceived by golden rain falling from the ceiling into the womb of the virgin Danaë, who remained a true virgin, never penetrated by any sexual organ anywhere, all the way to the god’s birth. 

Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, understood in antiquity to be a magical substance, the pneuma, that could enter and fill people, and effect changes in the world. What material element the god used to effect the conception could not be a relevant distinction. The conceptions are otherwise effectively identical.

A better example is Alexander the Great, whose “mythical” conception came either by a snake (in presumably sexual fashion) or in the form of lightning from heaven, striking the virgin mother Olympias as she slept before her groom consummated their marriage, a decidedly sexless conception, and one much closer in model to Justin’s idea of Mary being impregnated by “the Spirit and Power of God,” a description assignable to a thunderbolt, since lightning is an ephemeral substance like the pneuma, and a very manifestation of the power of god. But here, though we have sexless conception, Olympias is not a virgin by the time she gives birth. So we only have half the idea in place. Similarly in the myth of Io’s impregnation by a “light touch and breath” from Zeus (Aeschylus, Suppliants 16-18), a sexless conception, though still of a non-virgin (although curiously this is exactly the same way Jesus impregnated the Disciples with the Holy Spirit: John 20:22, 25, 27).

Ra, Hephaestus, and Perseus thus remain the most secure exemplars. And Perseus was the most familiar, which is why Justin names him as his prime example of a widely known virgin birth before Jesus. Apart from the method being golden raindrops rather than an infusion of pneuma, all the elements are identical: the mother conceives sexlessly and is a virgin still when she gives birth to the god.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11161

So much wrong. Where to begin?

i) Jesus "impregnated" the Disciples with the Holy Spirit? Carrier has a very strange mind.

ii) Carrier admits that Olympias doesn't count since she wasn't a virgin. In addition, wouldn't she be electrocuted rather than impregnated by a thunderbolt?

iii) The dove flew "into" Jesus? Where does Carrier come up with that interpretation? What does it even mean to say the dove flew "into" Jesus? The text never says that. 

iv) The Holy Spirit is "magical fluid?" Carrier has such a peculiar mind.

Evidently, the source of Carrier's bizarre identification is his wooden grasp of figurative speech. Scripture uses a variety of metaphors to describe the Holy Spirit and his activity, viz. wind, breath, fire, bird, oil, pouring, filling, washing, new birth, temple, fruit-bearer. 

v) Apropros (iv), Carrier's biblical illiteracy blinds him to the fact that when Luke says the Spirit will "overshadow" Mary, he's alluding to the Shekinah (e.g. Lk 9:34-36; Exod 40:34-38; Num 9:18; 10:34; Isa 4:5; Deut 33:12 [LXX]). It resembles a incandescent cloud. 

Ear on the ground

51 And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, 52 but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked (Mk 14:51-52).

This is a curious anecdote. Readers puzzle over the identity of the anonymous figure. One conjecture is that he might be living in a house on the garden grounds, and went outside to see what the commotion was about (Lagrange)

A more interesting conjecture is that Jesus celebrated the Lord's Supper at the home of John Mark. That's a good candidate for the site of the Lord's Supper (Cf. Lk 22:11-12; 24:33,36; Jn 20:19,26; Acts 1:13; 12:12).

Maybe Judas led the posse to Mark's house in case Jesus was still there. That awakened Mark, who hastily dressed and tailed them (Lane, Gundry). 

(BTW, this may indicate that Mark's family was wealthy. Most homes in Jerusalem didn't have an upper room. And if his family was wealthy, that says something about his education and literacy, pace Bart Ehrman.)

But modern readers are in the dark. And that's the point. This is one of those incidental details which indicates how close Mark's Gospel is to the events. His cryptic aside takes for granted that readers in his immediate social circle will recognize the referent. But once you get a two or more generations out, the allusion is lost on later readers. It's very topical information. 

God Is Dead, Let’s Play Pokémon

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/god-and-pac-man-in-ready-player-one/

Sex change doesn't change sex

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/03/21151/

Francis: Being The Change He Wants

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/pope-francis-change-the-church-ross-douthat/

Interim report card on Trump administration

Unless you're a news junkie, it's easy to loose track of what the Trump administration has accomplished thus far. Here's an interim report card: 

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/338806-sessions-is-cleaning-up-the-justice-department-and-not

https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/12/donald-trump-first-year-accomplishments/

https://www.dailywire.com/news/24854/year-one-complete-good-trumpbad-trump-list-ben-shapiro

http://www.weeklystandard.com/devos-stands-up-to-the-transgender-bullies/article/2011728

https://stream.org/trump-ban-transgender-troops/

Ancient literacy

https://baptist21.com/blog-posts/2018/triumph-christianitys-reading-practices-faulty-assumptions-swept-biblical-scholarship/

The shadow

1. In this post I'm going to venture some comments on Jordan Peterson. 

Peterson deservedly has a huge following. To his credit, he's is a brave man who stands his ground. Pushes back against the social engineers and social justice warriors. He fearlessly attacks feminism and speech codes. He attacks political correctness (e.g. "Islamophobia", "toxic masculinity"). He expounds and defends innate differences between boys and girls, men and women. He marches to the beat of a different drummer. 

Of course, that could be said of many libertarian/conservative pundits, but he's caught on in a way they haven't. In particular, he's tapped into the plight of disaffected young men who've been marginalized and vilified by identity politics. He exposes a weakness on the part of many evangelical "leaders" who are too concessive, too meek and mild. Who let the secular progressives to define the terms of debate. 

By contrast, Peterson is confrontational. He stands up to bullies. He challenges assumptions. He says things many people know are true, but are afraid to say. In a time of crisis, he's the kind of guy who rises to the occasion. 

2. There are, however, people who make good critics, good insurgents, but they are deficient when it comes to presenting a constructive alternative. They know what's wrong, but they don't know the solution. They can identify problems but their correctives point people in the wrong direction. Many revolutionaries succeed, but are then at a loss to make things better, because their vision is defective. That's Peterson's limitation. I'm going to comment on two aspects of Jordan's teaching in particular. 

3. I've seen several different clips in which he harps on the same theme. To be successful, you must strike a balance between your geniality and your shadow side. You need to get in touch with your dark side. Cultivate your capacity for evil. Develop your inner psychopath. Not that you should normally act on those impulses, but keep them under control–like a guard dog. 

This is something he gets from Jung. We have an alter-ego, like an evil twin. And that's the source of our strength. Our capacity for evil is what makes us tough and decisive. 

A successful individual must integrate those two sides of his personality. The potential for pathological evil is necessary to have strength of character. It's something we should foster, but channel and discipline. Be a monster, but a civilized monster. That's what makes anti-heroes appealing. 

Dropping the metaphors, I assume he's alluding to his belief that humans are animals who evolved from predators. And human males in particular still have those dark powerful instincts. A propensity for pitiless violence. A capacity to commit atrocities. Making your mark in the primordial primate dominance hierarchy.

For Peterson, evil is a necessary good, so long as that is properly harnessed. Without it, people take advantage of you. 

If that's a correct interpretation, then Peterson's recipe is radically at odds with Christian theology. In Christian theology, evil in moderation is not a necessary good. A capacity for sadistic cruelty and wanton mayhem, however bridled, is not an instrumental good. 

That doesn't mean Christian men are supposed to be soft. That's a harmful stereotype. But Christian masculinity isn't grounded in amoral predatory instinct. Peterson's prescription is dangerously false. It fosters a Fight Club mystique that's appealing to alienated young men, but a self-destructive fantasy. 

4. Given his view of the shadow, I don't see how Peterson can avoid having contempt for Jesus. Christ doesn't have a dark side. Jesus doesn't harbor sociopathic tendencies. Jesus doesn't have an alter ego. Jesus doesn't derive fortitude by tapping into his capacity for evil.That's not the source of his inner strength. Peterson's paradigm is intrinsically hostile to the Christian exemplar. 

5. The second thing I'd like to comment on is Peterson's mythological paradigm. And the bottom of this post I have post copious excerpts from his Maps of Meaning to document how he interprets and appropriates comparative mythology. My assessment is based on what he says in that programmatic statement of his reference frame. 

There are different kinds of atheism. On the one hand, there's the hard, cold, fatalistic atheism of Schopenhauer, Hedda Gabler (Ibsen), The Damned (Visconti), Long Day's Journey Into Night (O'Neill), Jean Genet, Rainer Fassbinder, &c. Fleeting moments of happiness are decoy birds. We're only in a position to appreciate the best things in life after we've lost them. 

By contrast, there's the heroic atheism of Buddha and Camus. We're all losers–doomed before we begin. But we can postpone defeat. Eke out a little satisfaction on our the way to the guillotine. 

It's clear to me that Peterson is a secular humanist. He subscribes to heroic atheism. Don't go gently into night. Go down fighting. Rage against the dying light.  

His outlook is like a POW camp. If the enemy wins, the POWs will die in that wretched camp. Die from illness, exposure, malnutrition, or old age–if the survive. They will never be released. But if the enemy loses, the commandant will spitefully execute them before the camp can be liberated by the victors. Either way, the POWs will never leave that wretched camp.

But they can make the most of the situation. Befriend the guards. Smoke, swear, drink, play cards, tell the same old stories–until they die there, one by one. 

6. I take Peterson to mean that paradigm myths are psychologically true. Paradigm myths are psychological and sociological allegories. They encode perennial aspirations and ideals. Even though mythology is literally false, it can be a useful guide to self-understanding because mythology still insightful regarding human nature and the human condition. 

But a problem with the inspirational value of mythology, given his secular outlook, is that human psychology (and corresponding behavior) boils to brain chemistry, which was cooked up in the laboratory of the evolutionary mad scientist. So there's nothing good about it. When you peel back the layers, idealism has no basis in reality. 

7. Peterson treats the Bible as an anthology of paradigm myths, no different in principle from world mythology. The only difference is that biblical mythology has been the dominant mythos of western civilization for centuries. But that's an arbitrary difference.

He views Jesus as a fictional variation on a stock mythotype. Whoever the historical Jesus was, the Jesus of the Gospels is just one of many masks donned by the ubiquitous hero of cross-cultural imagination. 

8. Mythical archetypes have their basis in objective experience. There are positive archetypes: the good mother, father, husband, wife, son, daughter, brother, sister, friend, mentor, spring, summer, sunrise, daytime, youth, health, prowess, beauty, fertility, orchard, oasis, river valley, rescue, deliverance, homecoming, reunion.   

That has its counterpart in negative archetypes: the abusive mother/father, adulterer/adulteress, faithless son, tempter/temptress, tyrant, false prophet, outcast, drifter, winter, sunset, darkness, disease, disability, decrepitude, excrement, desert, wasteland, storm, natural disaster, snakes, predators, monsters, starvation, betrayal, disgrace, desertion, exile, lostness.

There's nothing essential fictional about these motifs, because they constantly recur in real life, which is why they become stock characters, settings, and plots. So there's no presumption that Jesus is just another imaginary hero because he happens to correspond to some fictional tropes. 

Some archetypes like death, the trickster, and the warrior are positive or negative depending on the culture. 

9. Not only is there heroic atheism, but heroic faith. To revert to my illustration, there are Christians like Eric Liddell and Jane Haining who died in concentration camps by choice. They had a chance to elude capture, but they had a Christian servant ethic. 

In Peterson's secular outlook, when you die, that's it. But from a Christian outlook, the death camp has an invisible back door. When Eric Liddell and Jane Haining died in captivity, they went to heaven–like releasing a bird from a cage. Because Peterson lacks that otherworldly perspective, his secular humanism is valium. 

10. Peterson has no solution to human evil. Evil people can't fix themselves. They're not good enough. That's the dilemma. Humanism is like a dying patient with Ebola who takes a syringe, draws some of his own blood, then injects himself with his own blood to infuse himself with antibodies. But they're the same inadequate antibodies. Fallen creatures require outside intervention: moral and spiritual renewal. 

Likewise, once you do something evil, you can't step into the time machine and become innocent again. You can't turn the clock back and make it right.

Fallen creatures need forgiveness, predicated on redemption. Vicarious atonement. Penal substitution. 

Here's a representative sample of Peterson's mythological paradigm:

The sorry state of evangelical political theology

https://sovereignnations.com/2018/03/28/sorry-state-evangelical-political-theology/

Boys will be boys

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/its-right-and-necessary-to-let-boys-be-boys/

Pictograms

I was asked to comment on this essay:

https://www.academia.edu/29550502/A_Historical-Grammatical_and_Polemical_Reading_of_Genesis_1

for the most part I find the questions posed by both YEC and OEC advocates to be somewhat puzzling, because both positions appear, to me at least, to be asking thoroughly modern questions of a completely ancient text. I simply cannot understand how anyone believes that the author of Genesis had the hydrologic cycle of the early earth in mind when writing about the separation of the waters above and the waters  below in the 2nd millennia BCE.2

the best understanding of Genesis 1 is not as a scientific account of creation (a la YEC or OEC), nor is it a kind of demythologized and wholly non-historical plagiarism of other Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) creation myths (a la Delitzsche, Gunkel, or Enns); but rather, it is a purposeful, literary, and polemical taunting of the religious and cultural foes of the early Israelites as they were about to enter the land of Canaan in order to steer them toward religious fidelity to YHWH alone.

That's a strawman. Sure, Gen 1 is not a scientific description of cosmic and biological origins. It uses prescientific language. But that's beside the point. The point, rather, is whether this is a factual description of cosmic and biological origins. A scientific interpretation is a second-order exercise. 

The waters above

1. In Gen 1, there are three divine actions of separation: (i) separating light from darkness and (ii) day from night. Those are interrelated. And (iii) separating the waters above from the waters below. 

2. Many "scholars" think the waters above allude to a celestial reservoir, which the "solid dome" of the sky held back. One problem with that identification is that ancient Israelites were aware of the fact that rain comes from rainclouds. Indeed, depending on you physical vantagepoint, you can see rainclouds emit rain. Moreover, did ancient observers never notice that it only rains when skies are cloudy rather than clear? Did they never notice that it's dry on a clear day, then watch a cloud approach and dump rain? Were they that inattentive to the natural world around them? How would they survive?

3. But we might also consider the symbolic significance of "waters above". Ancient people associated "up there" with God, gods, and angels–while "down below" was the human realm. 

Both sunlight and rain are necessary to sustain human life. In addition, rainwater is drinking water. Very pure. 

Moreover, collected rainwater is safer than venturing down to the riverbank or watering hole, frequented by predators. 

The fact that life-sustaining water comes from above is emblematic of the fact that life and death depend on God's provision. The God "up there" discharges the waters "up there" to make life possible here below. Drought and famine occur in the absence of rain. And even lakes and rivers begin to dry up after a prolonged drought. Water for cooking, drinking, irrigation, game, and livestock becomes scarce. And the Middle East is an arid region to begin with. 

It's natural for ancient people to associate rain with God's celestial abode. God sends rain, or God withholds it. The terrestrial realm relies on the celestial realm to survive and flourish. 

Proxy baptism for the dead?

Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? (1 Cor 15:29). 

This is a famously cryptic statement. I'll take a stab at it. There may be two semantic ambiguities in the text which commentators typically overlook. 

i) Conventional translations render the preposition in this passage as substitutionary: "for, on behalf of". Although that's certainly a legitimate meaning of hyper, the preposition has other senses in Greek. For instance, it can also mean "because of, in view of" (e.g. Louw & Nida, 89:28). 

ii) Suppose we plug that into the text. What might it mean to say Christians are baptized with a view to the dead? Well, in context, Paul is defending the afterlife (i.e. resurrection of Christ, resurrection of the just). Perhaps he means baptism is a witness to the hope of life beyond the grave. The resurrection of the just. Death is not the end, but a portal to a better life on the other side of the grave–for those who die in Christ. 

iii) Then there's the question of how best to render baptizo. Conventional translations render that sacramentally. But at this early stage in Christian Greek usage, were the noun and verb already technical terms for the rite of initiation? It doesn't mean "baptize" in secular Greek. How long did it take for the word to acquire the specialized sense of "baptize/baptism" in Christian Greek? I don't think we can simply assume that's the default meaning of the word at the time of writing (c. 55 AD). 

Suppose, instead, it's a metaphor for ritual purification. And suppose we combine that with the alternative rendering of hyper. What might it mean to say Christians were washed with a view to the dead? 

Here's one possibility: in the ancient world you often had a cult of the dead. Fear of the dead. Fear of ghosts. A felt need to placate ancestral spirits. Provide ritual libations at the grave. Magical relics. Necromancy. And so on and so forth. 

Perhaps 1 Cor 15:29 is a figurative way of saying Christians have been liberated from such anxieties and superstitions. 

Admittedly, both these interpretations go beyond what the text says or implies, but any interpretation of this passage must read between the lines because we've lost the background information which Paul's original audience had at their fingertips. 

Adam and the Genome review

https://evolutionnews.org/2018/03/adam-and-the-genome-review-and-conclusion/

Evidence for the empty tomb

https://voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast/empty-tomb/

Gun stuff

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEqGBOt32NM

https://www.ballisticmag.com/2015/08/28/8-experts-pick-their-home-defense-weapon-of-choice/#balf15-hdw-buffoni

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3124326

Saturnalia

i) I'm ambivalent about commenting on the Stormy Daniels kerfuffle. The only reason I do so is the need to constantly reframe the issue to prevent the liberal establishment from defining the issues. Since accusations are habitually hurled about the "hypocrisy" of evangelicals who supported the Trump candidacy or support his presidency, it's necessary to speak for ourselves rather than letting the enemy speak for us. Not that the critics are listening, but you sow seed. Keep in mind that I didn't vote for Trump. 

ii) I've been studiously avoiding the Daniel's coverage. I don't take my cue from the priorities of the liberal media. I have my own priorities. The controversy is gossipy and irrelevant. Virtually everything I know about it I got from watching Ben Shapiro's analysis of the 60 Minutes interview. That's all it deserves. I'll grant the accuracy of his presentation for discussion purposes.

iii) The exchange consisted of one degenerate interviewing a second degenerate about a third degenerate. Sodomite Anderson Cooper interviewing porn star Stormy Daniels about horndog Donald Trump. Two debauchees denouncing the sex life of another debauchee. It's funny to see the liberal establishment feign disapproval over Trump's Hollywood/Upper Manhattan sexual mores when the liberal establishment has identical sexual mores.  Have you ever noticed that the people who attack Trump's licentiousness are the same people who mock Pence for following the Billy Graham rule? The ruling class increasingly resembles the pagan Roman aristocracy. 

iv) Apparently, Daniels had a consensual tryst with Trump in hopes of getting a slot on The Apprentice. So it's mutual exploitation. 

v) This might be damaging to Trump if there was a smoking gun. Problem is: Trump has brandished the smoldering revolver for decades. He's a braggadocio about his playboy lifestyle. He marries trophy wives. So none of this moves the needle from where it was during the campaign, or before the campaign. Trump was a known quantity in that regard going in. That's one reason among many that some of us supported other candidates during the primaries. But that's water under the bridge. 

And Democrats can never seize the high ground in this debate because they have accommodations in the same bordello. This is like a morality play in which all the characters are pimps, hookers, and madams. And that's not just metaphorical–unfortunately. Post-Christian culture reverts to Saturnalia. 

Secular Outpost Retweeted

James Buchanan Jr.‏ @wmbienes Mar 25

Who among us hasn't had unprotected intercourse with a porn star & playmate while wife #3 (the one you had intercourse with while still married to wife #2, the woman you slept with while still married to wife #1) was home nursing child number five? #StormyDanielsDay

723 replies7,741 retweets19,656 likes

Is promiscuity contrary to secular ethics? I guess Richard Carrier didn't get the memo:

 RICHARD CARRIER ON MARCH 4, 2018LEAVE A COMMENT

I’ll be doing an event in New York in May. And traveling with one of my girlfriends. We’re interested in knowing if anyone has a guest room to put us up for three nights.

Jesus' Fulfillment Of Psalm 22

Isaiah's Suffering Servant prophecy gets more attention than other Easter prophecies, as it should. But one that ought to get more attention than it does is Psalm 22. I wrote about it a couple of years ago. And here are links to the audio and video of a recent discussion James White and Michael Brown had about the psalm.

What Thou, my Lord, hast suffered,
Was all for sinners' gain;
Mine, mine was the transgression,
But Thine the deadly pain.
(O Sacred Head, Now Wounded)

Skin-deep faith

I'll comment on a post by Arminian theologian Randal Rauser:

https://randalrauser.com/2018/03/is-the-exodus-as-important-to-christian-belief-as-jesus-resurrection/

When I was growing up, I learned to read biblical narratives as historically reliable accounts of past events. Whether the issue was the death and resurrection of Jesus, the curious maritime journey of Jonah, the Exodus from Egypt, Samson’s killing a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass, or Adam and Eve talking to a serpent in the Garden of Eden, all these stories were accepted with equal conviction as accurate accounts of past events.

Unlike Rauser, I attended mainline denominations as a child, so I never had that point of contrast. I moved right while Rauser moved left. 

Then I went to university and that “historicity assumption” began to be eroded. 

Such a cliche. How many times have we seen that rerun? 

The Society of Evangelical Post-Arminians

Friday Files, 16 Mar 2018

March 16, 2018, posted by K.W. Leslie

Derek Rishmawy (Calvinist), Reformedish.

• “The comfort of a moral cretin.”

[12 Mar 2018] Reviewing Roger Olson’s Against Calvinism, Rishmawy defends the idea that God kills children in tsunamis… but admits it’s not the best thing to tell the grieving.

http://evangelicalarminians.org/ff180316/

i) Apparently, Arminians now believe natural forces like tsunamis have libertarian freedom. God has no control over when and where a tsunami strikes. Does SEA stand for the Society of Evangelical Animists? Does SEA subscribe to panpsychism? Are natural disasters are personal agents with a mind of their own? 

ii) It's ironic that Arminians attack Calvin's distinction between proximate/remote causation, but then act as though natural forces can't be traced back to divine agency. 

iii) Evidently, if Charles Wesley applied for membership to SEA, his application would be rejected since he attributes natural disasters to divine judgment:

http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-129-the-cause-and-cure-of-earthquakes/

Poor Wesley is too Arminian for SEA. What used to be traditional Arminian theology has now been reclassified as Calvinism. Perhaps SEA should be renamed the Society of Evangelical post-Arminians. 

Wesley now finds himself in the same company as Groucho Marx regarding the merits of  club membership. 

Arguendo

Dr. Darrell Bock 

There’s one thing we haven’t brought up that people listening probably, “Why haven’t you brought this up?” You notice we haven’t done any citation from the Gospel of John, and people go, “Why don’t you do that?” It’s because in an historical Jesus discussion, John is seen as being so explicit that the credibility of what he says is doubted, so we’re dealing with sources that skeptics will recognize, and will play with, and will accept, but they tend to be very slow about anything that’d direct out of the Gospel of John. So we’re working with evidence that a skeptic accepts as a way of thinking about did Jesus make divine claims about himself [transcript].

https://voice.dts.edu/tablepodcast/historical-jesus-divine/

There are several problems with that strategy:

i) It's true that in Christian apologetics we try to find common ground with unbelievers. That's valid up to a point. By the same token, that sometimes includes arguendo reasoning, where we "grant, for the sake of argument," an assumption or objection by the unbeliever. 

That can sometimes be a powerful strategy. It may form the basis of an a fortiori argument. A Christian apologist will play a weaker hand for discussion purposes. If he can win even when assuming that artificial handicap, then it makes his overall case that much stronger when he follows that up by playing a stronger hand. 

ii) It is, however, a problem when apologists fail to upshift. If they succeed in the arguendo stage of the argument, the next logical step is to build on that by bringing other evidence back into the discussion which they temporarily bracketed.

iii) The desire to find common ground should never be a one-sided exercise where the apologist cedes control of the debate to the unbeliever. The onus is not on an apologist to convince the unbeliever. Rather, the onus is on an apologist to provide good reasons for his position, regardless of whether the unbeliever is open to reason and evidence. Unbelievers cannot be allowed to dictate the criteria. The criteria are subject to debate no less than other matters. The rule of evidence predetermine what counts as evidence. So that's a decisive preliminary step.   

iv) If an apologist believes that John's Gospel is historically reliable, then he clearly thinks that's a defensible position–otherwise he wouldn't hold to it. So he should be prepared to defend it. The reasons he has for taking that position himself are reasons he can and should present for why others ought to share his position. 

v) Ironically, there's a sense in which John is easier to defend, on purely evidential grounds, than the Synoptics. There's stronger internal evidence for traditional authorship and/or eyewitness testimony. There's stronger external evidence for traditional authorship. And there's stronger archeological corroboration. 

vi) Although there are passages in Hebrews and the Pauline epistles where the Christology is just as high as the Fourth Gospel, it's important to have the historical grounding in a biography. Even in terms of apologetic strategy, a "skeptic" will dismiss the high Christology of the epistles because the authors had no firsthand knowledge of the historical Jesus. So the Gospel of John provides a key witness to high Christology in the setting of the historical Jesus. Not only is that valuable in its own right, but it forms a bridge between Synoptic Christology and the high Christology Hebrews and some Pauline epistles. (I'm not saying other NT documents have a low Christology. There's a difference between not affirming x and disaffirming x. The former is neutral.)

vii) To take a concrete example, if Christian apologists duck John's Gospel, Muslims will take notice of that. They will infer that Christians lack confidence in John's Gospel.   Likewise, ducking John's Gospel plays into Da Vinci Code suspicions about how orthodox Christology is an artifact of the Nicene Fathers and church councils rather than the NT. So the strategy is counterproductive. 

Partition theory

There's an abrupt mood change from 2 Cor 1-9 to 10-13. As a result, some scholars think 2 Corinthians is a two (or more) Pauline letters edited into one. There are more elaborate partition theories in which 2 Corinthians becomes a miniature Pauline canon of collected shorter letters. 

I think the most natural explanation for the dramatic tonal shift from 1-9 to 10-13 is that Paul didn't dictate the entire letter at one sitting. Rather, there was an interval of weeks or months between 1-9 and 10-13. 

I bring that up because it's relevant to something I've said on more than one occasion regarding the Gospels. Some NT scholars think the Gospels authors resequence some events for symbolic reasons. That's why some scenes are (allegedly) out of sync. 

However, even assuming chronological dislocation, that doesn't entail a narrative strategy. Rather, it could simply mean the Gospels weren't dictated at one sitting (which would be exhausting), so some "anachronisms" might be due to the fact that the Gospels have flashbacks or flashforwards, not because that's the order in which things happened, but because that's the order in which the evangelist remembers events in the life of Christ. And if the Gospels were dictated at more than one sitting, which seems inevitable, we'd expect the backtracking and zigzagging that happens in oral history. 

On rock

Coins also provide evidence of the effort to deify Livia. In some cases she is depicted as Demeter/Ceres, the goddess of grain. Philip issued coins in honor of Livia in the year 30CE, some stamped with the inscription karpophoros "fruitbearer", a clear allusion to Demeter/Ceres. Philip's coins leave no doubt as to his commitment to the Roman imperial cult and his specific loyalty to Livia herself. The linkage between the honoring of Livia and the refounding of Bethsaida is seen in coins issued in 30 CE that read "by Philip the tetrarch, founder" and "Julia Sebaste". "Founder" (ktistes) refers to the refounding of Bethsaida. 

The heights of Bethsaida rest on a rocky ridge of volcanic basalt. The earliest phase of the city reaches back to the Bronze Age. The site was chosen because it is the highest ground along the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, the ridge provides plenty of rock for building and defensive purposes, there is ready access to fresh water (such as the Jordan and Meshosim Rivers, as well as the Sea of Galilee) and there is also abundant arable land surrounding the ridge. Indeed, the original name of Bethsaida may have been Zer ("rocks") [as seen in the old geographical list in Josh 19:35, which lists "the fortified cities, Ziddim, Zer, Hammath, Rakkath, Kinneret", cities that encircle the Sea of Galilee]. It was on this "rock" that Philip the tetrarch refounded Bethsaida and began building the new city of Julias in honor of the Roman matriarch, now divinized in death (by order of the will of Augustus).

I wonder if Philip's recent announcement to rename Simon's hometown and to build a temple to honor Livia atop its rocky precipice was the actual incident that prompted Jesus to call Simon rock and promise to build his church on solid bedrock. Philip the tetrarch, the faithless son of Herod the Great, has betrayed the God of Israel and his people by embracing and promoting the rank paganism of the Romans, who worship humans and regard them as gods (see, for example, the sentiment of Paul the former Pharisee in Rom 1:22-23,25). Philip has announced that he will rename Bethsaida, the hometown of Peter and other disciples, to honor Livia, the widow of Augustus, whose divine name became Julia Augusta. In her honor and probably to support the cult of Livia and the drive to deify her Philip the tetrarch intends to build a temple on the rocky prominence of Bethsaida. In reaction to this plan Jesus promises to build his church, a community of confessing followers like Simon Peter, against which the very gates of Hades  will not prevail. That is, the political and demoniacal powers (and not simply "powers of death", as in the RSV's translation) that back Philip will not overcome the community that Jesus foresees growing up around the confession of Peter, namely, that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Son of God. C. Evans "'On This Rock I Will Build My Church' (Matthew 16:18): Was the Promise to Peter a Response to Tetrarch Philip's Proclamation?", Aaron White, David Wenham, & Craig A. Evans, eds. The Earliest Perceptions of Jesus in Context: Essays in Honor of John Nolland (Bloomsbury 2018), chap. 2. 

Paul, Apostle of Christ—the movie

http://www.craigkeener.com/paul-apostle-of-christ-the-movie/

The Negative And Subjective Side Of Near-Death Experiences

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are often cited as evidence against Christianity and other exclusivistic belief systems. Supposedly, NDEs suggest that everybody or almost everybody goes to heaven. The God of NDEs isn't the God of the Bible. And so on.

Alex Tsakiris recently interviewed Penny Sartori, a prominent NDE researcher. A lot of important points were made during the interview, and I recommend listening to the whole thing. But here are some of the highlights, followed by some comments of my own.

Raising the dead

1. There are three accounts of Jesus raising the dead. One is the widow's son (Lk 7:11-17). Another is the daughter of Jairus (Mk 5:21–43, Mt 9:18–26, Lk 8:40–56). Then there's Lazarus (Jn 11). Suppose a skeptic said that due to the lack of medical technology back then, they may only have appeared to be dead?

2. One issue is that Matthew reports the father of Jairus telling Jesus his daughter is already dead whereas Mark and Luke report him telling Jesus that she's dying/at the point of death. There are different explanations:

i) One standard explanation is that Matthew has a simplified account. Since, in Mark/Luke, after Jairus leaves home to find Jesus, someone is dispatched to tell him that his daughter has died, so the quest is moot. Due to narrative compression, Matthew cuts to the chase by having Jairus say his daughter is dead, since, by the time he found Jesus, she was gone. And I think that's a plausible explanation. Matthew paraphrases his statement.

ii) Of course, it's quite possible that Jairus said more than one thing. Did people only speak to Jesus in one-liners? 

iii) Also, there's a couple of dilemmas. To begin with, what parent wants to leave their child's deathbed? There's the anxiety that their child will pass away while they were absent. Parents wish to be there at the moment of death to comfort their child right up to the bitter end. They'd kick themselves if they weren't there when it happened. 

So what is Jairus to do? On the one hand, he might think it's better to risk leaving her bedside while she's still hanging on to go find Jesus. If he waits until she's dead, that may be too late. 

On the other hand, he might think it's better to see if she dies, then go find Jesus. That way he won't risk missing the moment of death. 

Agonizing calculations in both directions. I expect he was torn. 

It could be that she already expired when he left to find Jesus. But that presents another dilemma. If he tells Jesus that his daughter has died, he doesn't know if Jesus will say it's futile to go to his house. The reader knows that even if she's dead, the situation isn't hopeless, yet that's because we know how the story ends. But Jairus is in the thick of things, having to make snap judgments in a state of desperation and emotional turmoil. So maybe Jairus is stretching the truth to make it worthwhile for Jesus to go there. That's psychologically realistic. 

3. Consider how much time it would take for Jairus to track down Jesus, then how much time it would take for Jesus to follow him back home. That's a round trip.

To my knowledge, the ancient way of determining death was cessation of breathing. But if somebody stops breathing, it's generally a matter of few minutes before the brain begins to die. 

So even in the time it took for Jairus to leave home, locate Jesus, elbow his way through the crowd, explain the situation to Jesus, then double back, if the daughter had ceased breathing for that duration, she'd be truly dead. And minimally, it would be several hours before the widow's son was buried. So even without medical equipment/diagnostic techniques, they'd surely be dead if they permanently stopped breathing for that long an interval. 

This won't fly for readers who think the Gospels are fiction, but my post isn't addressing that mindset. I'm considering a different potential objection. 

The seven last words of Christ

1. There are harmonies of the Gospels that collate the "seven last words of Christ" on the cross:

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (Lk 23:34)

Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise (Lk 23:43)

Woman, see your son. Son, see your mother (Jn 19:26-27)

My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? (Mk 15:34, par. Mt 27:46)

I'm thirsty (Jn 19:28)

It is finished (Jn 19:30)

Father, into your hands I commend my spirit (Lk 23:46)

There are Good Friday liturgies centered on the last seven words, as well as musical settings (e.g. Haydn). 

Many cultures attach special significance to a person's dying words. And Jesus is extra special. 

2. However, there are "scholars" who don't think Jesus spoke all the words attributed to him from the cross. They think it's artificial to take different sayings from different Gospels and splice them together. They think the sayings attributed to Jesus in each Gospel make sense in the context of each Gospel's Passion narrative, but when you try to combine them, you end up with unrelated sayings. That disrupts the logical connections and narrative strategy of each Gospel writer. And a harmonistic sequence is arbitrary, by breaking them apart, as they exist in each Gospel, then mixing and matching them. 

3. There's a grain of truth to the objection inasmuch as any reconstructed order will be a bit conjectural. That said:

4. The dying words of Christ recorded in the four Gospels are realistic if you consider the situation:

i) Some people die a peaceful painless death. Likewise, some people are lucid right up to the moment of death. But even in that ideal situation, if they sense they're dying, this is their last chance to tell their loved certain things. So I expect they frantically consider what to say. They're rapidly running out of time, so they say whatever comes to mind whenever it comes to mind. Long silences in-between. Things pop into their heads. So there's no logical flow to what they say. 

Most of us don't make a list of things we'd like to say on our deathbed. So we improvise at the end. It might be a good spiritual exercise to draw up a list.

ii) However, that's a best-case scenario. Some dying people are only intermittently lucid. So there will be no logical connection between what they said before and what they said later. During moments of lucidity, they say whatever comes to mind. They don't keep track of what they said before. 

In addition, if, like Jesus, they're in unbearable pain, then consecutive thought isn't even possible. The pain consumes their attention. Unbearable pain destroys sustained concentration. They can't maintain a train of thought. It's all they can do is muster their dwindling energy to temporally force the pain into the back of their minds in order to think, reflect, and say something coherent. 

If would be completely unrealistic if the last recorded words of Christ read like a nice little prepared speech. It's not coincidental that the pre-Passion teaching of Christ consists of extended talks. Parables, speeches, and dialogues–whereas what he says from the cross is reduced to fragments. Broken sentences and terse utterances. A few words here, a few words there. That's what we'd expect given his excruciating ordeal. 

5. Now the Gospel writers, in selecting what statements to record, may select related sayings. 

6. The authenticity of Lk 23:34 is disputed, but that's on text-critical grounds rather than redaction critical grounds. 

Preference falsification

https://alastairadversaria.com/2016/11/17/a-crisis-of-discourse-part-2-a-problem-of-gender/