Passover Plot
- by the time I was in my early teens belief in the miracles of the Old
and New Testaments as acts of God had faded somewhat, but I still felt explanations
were needed. This attitude is, again, still alive today, with occasional
foolhardy
scientists (not to be confused with the dime-a-dozen Creation science
nitwits) straying way outside their areas of competence to "explain" the
parting of the Red Sea, or the
plagues of Egypt or the destruction of
Sodom and Gomorrah and the sad and salty end of Mrs Lot, or Ezekiel's
vision (this one was a
UFO by the way). The book that set me off looking
at the stories in the New Testament in a new light was
The Passover Plot
by Hugh J Schonfeld. I still have my paperback copy from 1967. Basically
Schonfeld laid out his vision of a fully human Jesus who, like many at the
time, mined the biblical prophecies for predictions of a Messiah. He then
deliberately chose to fulfill those predictions in order to precipitate
the Kingdom of God. Ultimately he failed to survive his crucifixion, and
the promise of his return became a part of Christian belief. What fascinated me was
not Schonfeld's main thesis, which does not hold up too well, but the light he shed on other matters. How
the career and expectations of a Messiah, a
Suffering Just One, could be
found in the old scriptures and interpreted as prophecies, especially if that was what you were looking
for in the first place. How Schonfeld placed his very Jewish Jesus firmly in a 1st
century Jewish context, and how he highlighted various mysteries and
discrepancies in the four Canonical Gospels, and how Matthew, Mark and Luke
sang from a very different hymn sheet to John. All this was a revelation
to me - none of this had been hinted at in school. In the local library I
chanced across a book, one in a series on great trials of history. It was called
The trial of Jesus of Nazareth by S G F
Brandon, and, if anything,
its impact was greater than that of The Passover Plot. Brandon placed the figure
of Jesus even more securely in the history of
Judaea but not
as a peaceful preacher, but a firebrand, a zealot, a terrorist. This,
Brandon explained, is why he suffered the Roman punishment of crucifixion,
not because of some imagined blasphemy, but for treason against the state.
I sought out books by Brandon to learn more - in particular The Fall of Jerusalem and the Christian Church
subtitled, "A study of the
effects of the Jewish overthrow of A. D. 70 on Christianity". This put
forward the idea that those who formed the "original" Christian movement,
a Jewish nationalist religious group, for the most part died in the Jewish
Revolt against Rome in 66-73 CE*. After a period of which little
is known,
Pauline or Gentile Christianity appeared, pieced together from the letters
of Paul and others. By this time any interest I had in the religious,
supernatural elements
of the story had almost completely disappeared, replaced with a wish to find out more of
what we now call the "historical" Jesus. The diminution of belief in the
supernatural aspects of the New Testament was a gradual one, as the quest
for real history triumphed over any wish for spiritual comfort. At about
the same time the lingering feeling that there must be something to
paranormal claims similarly faded in the face of the lack of convincing evidence. But
with regard to Christianity in particular there was an even bigger
revelation in store.
Historical Jesus? - one of the big claims, if not THE big claim of
Christianity is that God actually intervened in human history through the
life of Jesus. As I saw it then, the whole Christian edifice rested on this
assumption and I was hungry for information. I read books by E P Sanders
such as
The Historical Figure of Jesus, and the ruminations of the
Jesus
Seminar. I also belatedly became aware of the work done by the 19th century
German scholars, and their
Higher Criticism of the Old and New Testaments. What seemed puzzling, and
was first hinted at by Brandon, is why a Jewish nationalist religious
movement should disappear, (as Brandon put it "go into a dark tunnel")
only to reappear as Paul's gentile religion? What was the connection between the
two? Which was the more authentic? (By now I had also read works by
Robert
Eisenman as well, but found his ideas a little too idiosyncratic.) It was
the advent of the internet that brought what now seems to me to be the
likeliest hypothesis to cover the apparent disconnects in the early
Christian story, between the "Jerusalem church" and Paul and between the
gospels and Paul. Earl Doherty is someone who looked at these puzzles and
instead of reading the interpretations of others as I had done, he went back
to the source material, the earliest Christian documents, in the original Greek. What
follows is my own impression of Doherty's thesis and may well err in some
ways - his website, The Jesus Puzzle (and book) provides exhaustive detail.
What, No Jesus? - the first
thing to make clear is that all of
Doherty's assertions and conclusions are rigorously backed by references, and
are
meticulously thought through. Most New Testament scholars, as opposed to
fundamentalist Bible nuts, now
acknowledge that the
four gospels were written long
after the events they claim to portray. The
earliest, Mark, on internal evidence
can be no earlier than 70CE and possibly later. It can be shown that the
gospels of Matthew and Luke use Mark extensively and so themselves are later in date.
These three similar gospels are known as the Synoptic Gospels for that reason -
synoptic meaning "seeing together". John's Gospel seems to be an even later
reworking of the same story, but overlaid with a very different theology. The
names of the Gospel writers are merely convenient labels by the way - no
one knows who the authors were. So if the Gospels postdate the events they
purport to describe by as much as 40 years or so, is there anything earlier
and possibly more authentic? The short answer is yes, the letters of Paul.
He was writing as little as 20 years after the time of Jesus - what can he
tell us about him? Nothing. The writings of Paul are ignorant of any of
the events of Jesus' life in the Gospels - apart from the crucifixion. But
to Paul this was some supernatural event on another plane of existence -
not the bloody torture and murder of a human being (so lovingly and
lingeringly depicted recently by Mel Gibson). Paul knows nothing of the
Gospel Jesus - he knows only a mystical figure that he, and others, see in visions. When it
would have greatly suited his case to quote the Gospel preaching and parables of
Jesus, Paul fails to do so. Upon this and a great deal else Doherty builds a
convincing case for there being no historical figure of Jesus - he was the
spiritual savior of a mystery cult, similar to
many others of the time.
The historicization process came later, and was based in the main on
scriptural prophecies. This short precis does no justice to Doherty's
work, as a trip to his website will readily demonstrate. (If my too brief
sketch intrigues you enough to learn more do go and read not only
Doherty's site, but also
this review of his work by Richard Carrier.) In
re-reading the above paragraphs I realize that I have not achieved quite
what I set out to do, which was to explain my loss of faith in the
supernatural. It just seems that as I became more interested in
archaeology and history and the more I learned, my belief, in the
words of
Lewis Carroll, "..had softly and suddenly vanished away.." (The same
happened in parallel to any shred of belief in the paranormal, the more I learned about
the scientific method.) A young sheep became an older, and perhaps wiser,
goat through the process of rational inquiry.
Qualitative Quizzes - like many folk 80 is a sucker for online,
self-assessment quizzes. Also like many folk 80 happily accepts any results
flattering to the ego or confirming prejudices, deeming them "accurate".
Any unacceptable/unflattering results are forgotten, as easily as the inaccurate
guesses of a cold-reading psychic are forgotten by true believers. A while
back 80 looked at website called
Political Compass. Here is a quiz that
defines your political inclinations not just by the old and tired left
wing/right wing
dichotomy but also by your political compass bearing. The idea is perhaps
better explained by the Compass folk themselves, " The old one-dimensional
categories of 'right' and 'left' , established for the seating arrangement
of the French National Assembly of 1789, are overly simplistic for today's
complex political landscape. For example, who are the 'conservatives' in
today's Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers
who have adopted the right-wing views of conservatives like Margaret
Thatcher ? On the standard left-right scale, how do you distinguish
leftists like Stalin and Gandhi? It's not sufficient to say that Stalin
was simply more left than Gandhi. There are fundamental political
differences between them that the old categories on their own can't
explain. Similarly, we generally describe social reactionaries as
'right-wingers', yet that leaves left-wing reactionaries like Robert
Mugabe and Pol Pot off the hook." For added interest the result displayed
also shows, within the limits of the test, the political company you keep.
80 first did the quiz a couple of years back and then again recently, after
a friend mentioned the site. The result was in the same category on each
occasion - "left-wing libertarian". This was deemed quite flattering, but
may only reflect the absence of a "godless curmudgeon" category. Another,
somewhat more frivolous,
online quiz of interest is on the New Humanist website, called
Poker
Faces. The aim is to determine "what kind of humanist are you?" Note that this
assumes anyone who takes the test already feels themselves to be a
humanist. A well-rounded definition of such would perhaps be as follows " A person who emphasizes reason and scientific inquiry, individual freedom
and responsibility, human values and compassion, and the need for
tolerance and cooperation, while rejecting supernatural, authoritarian,
and anti-democratic beliefs and doctrines." Keen to discover his
subcategory, 80 took the quiz, answering as honestly as possible, and was
pigeonholed on the results page, somewhat unflatteringly as a "Hairshirt".
Here are a couple of paragraphs describing such an individual
"Excuse us, could you just put down that hammer for a minute and
listen. You’re so busy getting things done you rarely take any time out
just to relax. In fact, you’ve probably forgotten how to relax. That’s
because you’re so anxious to prove that it’s possible to lead a good and
moral life without religion that you have built a strict and forbidding
creed all of your own."
"You would never cheat on your partner, drink and drive, accept bribes or
touch drugs. You never waste money though you give lots to charity. Living
a good life? You’re a model to us all. But it wouldn’t hurt you to try a
little happiness once in a while. Loosen up."
Those who know 80 well will find this latter description as amusing as it is
innaccurate. To find out for yourself, surf over to Political Compass and New
Humanist and see how your self-image stacks up.
Just Books, Nothing More -
nothing less. It is no big thing nowadays for scholars to critically examine the
Christian Bible in order to find out how it was written, by whom and why,
for, apart from a few areas in countries like the USA and Nigeria, no one
is likely to try and kill them for their impious endeavors. Those who
choose to subject the Quran and Islamic belief to the
same treatment, wherever they may be,
are taking a far greater risk. Fundamentalist Islam is quick to visit
physical violence on those perceived to be blasphemers or apostates. To
quote from this review in the New York Times, "
Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" prompted death threats because it
appeared to mock Muhammad. Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed
because one of his books was thought to be irreligious. And when the
Palestinian scholar Suliman Bashear argued that Islam developed as a
religion gradually rather than emerging fully formed from the mouth of the
prophet, he was thrown from a second-story window by his students at the
University of Nablus." (There is also the most recent high
profile example - the murder of Dutch director, Theo van Gogh, for his
film Submission.) It is considered that the Quran is holy and
the immutable word of Allah - even further, many think it can only be
understood in the original Arabic - a translation is considered worthless. It
therefore takes a lot of guts to not only examine the Quran in a critical
light, but also to make the results of that study publicly available. To many
folk raised in the western secular tradition it seems obvious that an
ancient religious book cannot fail to be a product of its times, and will
reflect the beliefs, culture and aspirations of the writer or writers,
which may not be applicable to the world today or indeed to the historical
period they purport to document. To fundamentalists,
Christian, Jewish and Muslim, this is unacceptable and they doggedly try
to apply the
precepts and laws in their holy books to situations that would have been
beyond the comprehension of the original writers and their contemporaries.
The entire worldview of the Christian Bible, the Jewish Torah and the
Quran can only be a product of the various times in which they were
written - the preachers and the prophets had no inkling of the immensity
and complexity of the Universe that has since been revealed by the scientific
method. How could they?
(attempts to claim otherwise are
laughable
Warning - contains cheesy music).
80 has mentioned
The Skeptic's Annotated
Bible many times for its documentation of the many instances of injustice,
absurdity, cruelty, violence and intolerance etc etc that can
be found all through the so-called good book. That focus has now
been widened to include the
Book of
Mormon and the
Quran.
Pages on the web that subject the Quran to such analysis are few and far
between, as are pages written by those who have left Islam and daringly
wish to tell others. One such is
Apostates of Islam
which tells the stories of ex-Muslims and turns an unflattering spotlight
on the Quran " Quran is replete with scientific
heresies, historic blunders, mathematical mistakes, logical absurdities,
grammatical errors and ethical fallacies. It is badly compiled and it
contradicts itself. There is nothing intelligent in this book let alone
miraculous. Muhammad challenged people to produce a “Surah like it” or
find an error therein, yet Muslims would kill anyone who dares to
criticize it. In such a climate of hypocrisy and violence truth is the
first casualty." The, apparently humanist, writers of
the site blame the current wave of Jihadist terrorism on the laws and
strictures of the Quran and yet many moderate Muslims can quote verses on
tolerance and peace. As with many religious books you take away what you
want or need. Many liberal Christians cannot recognize their Prince of
Peace in the apocalyptic figure that Christian fundamentalists hope
will condemn nonbelievers to agonizing torture that lasts for eternity -
and these groups each quote the Bible to bolster their point of view. The
same goes for the Quran. These are books written by humans for another age
and interpreted by contemporary humans in an effort to apply their ancient
ideas to a very different world. It makes as little sense as trying to
apply the outlook and the mores of the Achaean warriors of Homer's Iliad
to the problems we all face today. (No doubt someone is trying this.)
For a site that shows a healthy attitude towards Islam in particular, and
religious tolerance in general, take a look at
Muslim Refusenik, the work
of author Irshad Manji. The site is based around her book The Trouble With
Islam, which she describes as an open letter, "a Muslim voice of reform,
to concerned citizens worldwide -- Muslim and not. It's about why my faith
community needs to come to terms with the diversity of ideas, beliefs and
people in our universe, and why non-Muslims have a pivotal role in helping
us get there. I appreciate that every faith has its share of literalists.
Christians have their Evangelicals. Jews have the ultra-Orthodox. For
God's sake, even Buddhists have fundamentalists.
But what this book hammers home is that only in Islam is literalism
mainstream. Which means that when abuse happens under the banner of Islam,
most Muslims have no clue how to dissent, debate, revise or reform." It is
a sad reflection on the insecurity of many Muslims that their reaction to
Irshad Manji's work is abuse and threats of violence, as many of the
reader's comments she has received illustrate. Why does an all-powerful
god need to have violence inflicted on his behalf by one human being upon
another? Irshad Manji is no apostate but is passionate about making Islam
relevant to the world as it really is and not some past ideal that never
really existed. As she says, "At the beginning of my book, I call myself a
"Muslim Refusenik". That doesn't mean I refuse to be a Muslim; it means
that I refuse to join an army of automatons in the name of God. In that
spirit, I'm asking Muslims in the West a very basic question: Will we
remain spiritually infantile, caving to cultural pressures to clam up and
conform, or will we mature into full-fledged citizens, defending the very
pluralism that allows us to be in this part of the world in the first
place?" She perhaps has more chance winning hearts and minds
by arguing from within her religion but she seems to be as threatened as
the secularists. For fundamentalist believers any deviation, however
slight, is a cause for hatred.
Also see this page for the
Muslim
Manifesto for Freedom from French Muslims and a site that 80 has
featured before, The
Institute for the Secularisation of Islamic Society This
page on the
historical reality of Mohammad is particularly interesting. It discusses
the book
The Quest for the Historical Muhammad edited by Ibn Warraq. The
review states that the Arabic source material for the official account of the
Prophet's life "are a form of "salvation history" -
self-serving, unreliable accounts by the faithful." Anyone who has
looked at the Christian New Testament from a critical point of view will
recognize the similarity of intent here between the early writers, be they
Christian or Muslim.
(another favorable review of Ibn Warraq's
book is here.) It is informative to scroll down to the reader's
comments on The Quest for the Historical Muhammad on the
Amazon page for this book. Opinions jump from enthusiastic endorsement
to scholarly criticism to complete rejection. Amazon has a star rating for
reviewers to use. This book attracted either 5 stars (top rating) or one,
with very few in betweens. It would seem that the single stars are only
there because it is not possible to award zero stars on this system. One
reviewer dismissed the editor's name as a nom de plume, as though this
invalidated the work rather than realizing it merely displays perfectly
understandable caution.
No one wants to be another Theo van Gogh.
The Good Guys
PESTS - here is the
PESTS page,
the name being an acronym which expands to Psychologists Educating
Students to Think Skeptically - a wholly admirable idea. Jeff Ricker, the
site's owner expresses his aims thus, "Many students come into psychology
courses with prior beliefs that have been acquired from popular or
traditional sources (such as the mass media or religious
doctrine)--beliefs that often conflict with course material. Although we
teachers of psychology would like our students to critically examine such
conflicts by looking at the relevant evidence, far too often we find that
they fail to do so effectively. A fundamental problem is that students
tend to feel certain that their prior beliefs are true--a certainty that
often is based on inadequate evidence." This he hopes to address by
instilling in students both a skeptical attitude and
methodological-reasoning skills. PESTS is a scholarly mailing list
intended to facilitate this objective, which is by no means an easy one.
We all have assumptions which we unconsciously apply in our dealings with
the world. Most of the time we are unaware of them so it is a good thing
to drag such assumptions, kicking and screaming, into the spotlight and
subject them to scrutiny. Even if you are not in Ricker's target group his
site has some useful links to
other skeptical sites and a large number of
articles - recommended.
Skeptical Essays - 80 has found
Robert Carroll's Skeptic's Dictionary a very useful resource indeed but
there are other good things on his site as well as the definitions. This
page is devoted to Skeptical Essays,
a good number by Carroll himself. There are
many other writers listed, including familiar names such as Michael
Shermer, James Randi, Richard Dawkins and Victor Stenger. There are links
to essays under a range of categories from New Age Therapy to Science and
Junk Science. The only complaint about this page is that you can spend
hours here, such is the quality of content. Note the verb used, spend, as
opposed to waste. You may be neglecting other, perhaps more pressing
matters (like work?) but you will definitely go away from these essays
having learned something - recommended.
Chopping Off the Fringe - is the way to see clearly. This site,
Incredible
Anthropology, is the work of Elizabeth J Lawlor, and is devoted to
combatting what she, a little too charitably, calls fringe archaeology. It is, in
fact, cult or pseudoarchaeology which as regular readers know is something
that 80 finds to be irritating, pernicious nonsense and yet is obviously very lucrative for
Graham Hancock and the like. Lawlor's pages are aimed at the general
reader as the introduction makes clear. "Are you wondering whether a TV
show about Noah's Ark was for real? Curious about a web site that says
ancient Celts were in Oklahoma? Does your inquiring mind want to know
about a tabloid centerfold showing Adam and Eve's grave? Well, this web
site won't give you the answers! But it will equip YOU to decide whether
certain "archaeological science" in the media is really credible
(supported by evidence) or incredible (unsupported or contradicted by
evidence)." She does a good job in meeting her objectives, starting out
with some definitions - some of which may seem very basic, such as the
difference between science and pseudoscience, but for the general reader
this is very useful indeed. When TV channels show documentary programs
indiscriminately, about say, Egyptology, and then show next what also seems to
be a factual item about
the hunt for Noah's Ark or a lost Ice Age super-civilization the average
viewer needs to be able to tell the difference between the two. Lawlor's
site supplies the tools necessary to sort the wheat from the chaff. She
also lists some
pseudo sites on
a know your enemy basis, covering subjects such as Atlantis,
Ancient Atomic Warfare and, of course, Egypt and the Pyramids. To counter
all this silliness Lawlor also supplies links to pages
skeptical of
pseudoarchaeology and very useful they are, including one of 80's
favorite sources of information on real archaeology and the nonsense
variety, Doug's Archaeology Site. If you have a friend or acquaintance who
has been suckered by Ancient Astronauts, Mayan Calendar Predictions or any
of the claptrap so prevalent these days, do them a favor, send them along to
Incredible Anthropology - recommended.
Quotes
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the
cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which
more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we
called it the word of a demon, than the word of God. It is a history of
wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind"
Thomas Paine
"Those not afraid to exercise their minds in more rational directions,
who have not surrendered to a fear of the uncertain, have come to realize
that the path of religion and revelation has been a colossal mistake,
detrimental to the human spirit and potential, and with many injurious
side effects: superstition, divisiveness from the individual to the
international scale leading to wars and persecution, a stultifying of
knowledge and education and the development of human rights."
Earl Doherty
"One man's "magic" is another man's engineering. "Supernatural" is a
null word." Robert A
Heinlein
"My last vestige of "hands off religion" respect disappeared in the smoke
and choking dust of September 11th 2001, followed by the "National Day of
Prayer," when prelates and pastors did their tremulous Martin Luther King
impersonations and urged people of mutually incompatible faiths to hold
hands, united in homage to the very force that caused the problem in the
first place."
Richard Dawkins
"There is a very, very important difference between feeling strongly,
even passionately, about something because we have thought about and
examined the evidence for it on the one hand, and feeling strongly about
something because it has been internally revealed to us, or internally
revealed to somebody else in history and subsequently hallowed by
tradition. There's all the difference in the world between a belief that
one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic and a belief that
is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority, or revelation."
Richard Dawkins
"We will never have true civilization until we have learned to
recognize the rights of others." Will
Rogers
