PeaceBang

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1. Being a guy who loves road trips, I love that translation.

   Comment by will shetterly — July 7, 2008 #

2. I don’t buy that it “definitely” doesn’t refer to Jesus just “because it dates from some decades before Mr. J’s birth”. The Gospels identify many much older prophecies than this one with Jesus, so why not one that is only decades old as well?

   Nevertheless, there were a whole lot of apocalypses in circulation at the time, and not all of them were very good. Most, in fact, were not. Apocalypse was a whole popular literary genre, sort of like paperback suspense or romance novels are today. This particular one is just one of the many that over time wasn’t considered significant enough to be admitted into either the Jewish or Christian scriptural canon.

   I can understand the archeological sensation, but as far as religious insight goes, I don’t see that this changes anything on either side of the debate. If you are so inclined, you can understand the new text as a specific prophecy of Jesus’ resurrection, but you probably already take the truth of that for granted. Or if you are so inclined, you can also understand the resurrection story as yet one more example from the Gospels of an after-the-fact attempt to align his memory with popular messianic literature, but likewise, you probably already understand the prophetic-fulfillment bits of the Gospels that way anyway.

   Comment by fausto — July 7, 2008 #

3. Although Peacebang and Fausto are likely perfectly aware of this, I just want to throw in a cautionary note about attributing the survival or extinction of religious traditions, texts, or teachings to their quality or lack thereof(Fausto seems to be making this argument more overtly). While I certainly agree that Jesus’s teachings contain many wonderful things and that this has helped them to survive, we can never accurately examine the history of religion without paying close attention to power.

   Christianity survived as much, if not more so, because of the consistent willingness of its adherents to employ forms of power against other religions. Even seemingly pacifistic religions such as Buddhism were able to out-compete their fellows because (in part) they provided sanction to the power structures of their day in ways that other traditions did not. Likewise, Buddhism then died out in India in part because resurgent Hinduism provided a greater religious justification for violence against kings’ rivals (and the Muslim encroachers) than Buddhism did.

   The survival of Jesus’s message is due as much to awful, shameful acts as it is to its own inherent truth/beauty/wisdom (and, let’s not forget, courageous, compassionate acts of past Christians also played a part). The demise of the tablet’s message may be due as much to poor luck, attacks by more powerful factions, or other factors as to any deficiency in its own merits.

   Again, Peacebang and Fausto, I have no doubt y’all are already perfectly aware of this, but since the issue arises, I want to put in a plea for the more contextualized understanding of religious history, mainly for the other readers. Too often my students take the success of a tradition to mean it is _right_ (especially their own).

   I’ll admit I’m a little confused about the attention the tablet is getting. We already know about all sorts of other pre- and post-Jesus messiahs who were all part of the ferment and religious competition of the time. This tablet doesn’t break a lot of new ground, so far as I can tell. Here’s my random guess: news reporters tend to be woefully uninformed about religion and to have quite stereotypical views about what religions and their adherents are like. I say this based on years of interviews with news reporters, as well as reading the poor quality of most coverage in the news. Probably many of the reporters hyping this story are themselves ignorant of the many precedents, and believe that this is the sort of revolutionary information that will pop Christians’ bubbles. They don’t know enough about Christianity to know that on the one hand such precedents already exist, and on the other hand Christians have always been perfectly good at interpreting pre-Christian documents as prophetically referring to Jesus and/or being false traps set by the devil. Anyway, that’s my best guess. [All good points, and thanks for writing in, Jeff. - PB]

   Comment by Jeff Wilson — July 7, 2008 #

4. Okay, you two. Are you traveling in a matched set now?

   Comment by PeaceBang — July 7, 2008 #

5. PB,

   If this new discovery had any influence on the development of the Christian Gospels and the crucifixion/resurrection stories, it may be another example of what Crossan describes as “not history remembered but prophecy historicized.”

   You can find a debate transcript on “Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?” This debate is between Dr. William Lane Craig and Dr. Bart D. Ehrman. Online link here:

   http://www.holycross.edu/departments/crec/website/resurrdebate.htm

   This debate transcript is interesting because I think it highlights the differences between theological claims and historical claims.

   Comment by Steve Caldwell — July 7, 2008 #

6. Jeff Wilson wrote:
   -snip-
   “Although Peacebang and Fausto are likely perfectly aware of this, I just want to throw in a cautionary note about attributing the survival or extinction of religious traditions, texts, or teachings to their quality or lack thereof … ”

   Meme evolution (e.g. the competition between differeing cultural ideas) may be analogous to the Darwinian reproductive fitness struggle.

   “Winning” the competition between differing ideas speaks only to reproductive fitness of the winning idea and not to any other merits of the idea.

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

   Comment by Steve Caldwell — July 7, 2008 #

7. Jeff says:

   I just want to throw in a cautionary note about attributing the survival or extinction of religious traditions, texts, or teachings to their quality or lack thereof(Fausto seems to be making this argument more overtly)

   That’s a fair point, and I didn’t mean to imply that this particular text was lost because it was particularly “bad”. I was trying to say that we already know that there were lots of apocalypses in circulation back then, that together helped frame the first-century Jewish eschatological view. Finding the lost text of one that speaks of a three-day resurrection is intriguing, but doesn’t add to what we already know in a way that changes how we already think about theological questions.

   Jeff also says:

   Too often my students take the success of a tradition to mean it is _right_ (especially their own).

   Not many UUs in your class, I guess?

   Comment by fausto — July 7, 2008 #

8. Okay, you two. Are you traveling in a matched set now?

   Yes, I think so.

   Comment by fausto — July 7, 2008 #

9. I wonder which of us is Tweedle-dee and which is Tweedle-dum… [actually, I mean Fausto and Will Shetterly, who had a huge back-and-forth not long ago, but that’s okay! You can still be whichever Tweedle you want… PB]

   As for UUs in my class, that depends. When I teach for Starr King I still get this same attitude sometimes, which means even UU graduate-level students aren’t immune to it. But yes, undergrads from a mainstream Christian background are certainly the most prone to this fallacy.

   Comment by Jeff Wilson — July 7, 2008 #

10. [actually, I mean Fausto and Will Shetterly, who had a huge back-and-forth not long ago, but that’s okay! You can still be whichever Tweedle you want… PB]

    Oh! Well, I don’t know, but I suspect Will would like the last two things I put up over at the Socinian.

    Comment by fausto — July 7, 2008 #

11. I would submit that this “ancient tablet” is probably another sensationalist scam, as is clearly suggested by the facts

    (1) that no specific information is available on its provenance (”probably found near the Dead Sea” doesn’t quite do it for me); and

    (2) that no details are provided on carbon dating of the ink or analysis of the stone.

    As such, this “news” brings to mind the faked Lost-Tomb-of-Jesus “documentary” designed to financially profit from people’s fascination with the “real” Jesus, as well as the larger scandal of the biased and misleading way the Dead Sea scrolls are being presented in museum exhibits around the world, with an antisemitic nuance emerging on a government-run North Carolina museum’s website. See, e.g.,

    http://spinozaslens.com/libet/articles/dworkin_ethicsofexhibition.htm (article critical of exhibits)

    and

    http://blog.news-record.com/staff/frontpew/archives/2008/06/dead_sea_scroll.shtml (discussion and further links)

    Comment by Peter Kaufman — July 8, 2008 #

12. Guess that makes me the Walrus.

    Comment by Jeff Wilson — July 8, 2008 #

13. As for UUs in my class, that depends. When I teach for Starr King I still get this same attitude sometimes, which means even UU graduate-level students aren’t immune to it. But yes, undergrads from a mainstream Christian background are certainly the most prone to this fallacy.
    

    I have a hard time imagining that many UU grad students deem conventional Christianity to be right, just because it is successful. Nor can I imagine them deeming contemporary UUism to be particularly successful, at least if they are being objective about it, even though we may think we are right.

    Over on his blog, Anthony David traces the UU sense of righteousness not to our present success but to our origins in the puritanical Standing Order of New England. I think he’s on to something there.

    Comment by fausto — July 8, 2008 #

14. Fausto, there are more UU Christians in seminary than you may be aware of. But perhaps it hinges on what you mean by “conventional” Christianity–I’ve had students who took mainline Protestant Christianity to be the convention that everything is naturally measured by, located themselves within that tradition (albeit on the liberal end of the spectrum), and assumed this tradition occupied the mainstream because of natural excellence. Not that it was phrased that way, we’re just talking about general assumptions. I’m not saying that undergrads aren’t much more prone to this way of thinking, just that we find it all over the place in varying degrees.

    Comment by Jeff Wilson — July 8, 2008 #

15. Slight tangent: The meme hypothesis is shaky for several reasons, but the most important one is the failure to be significantly comparable to the actual components of biological heredity except for the most cartoonish view of “genes”. Another is that there is no standard for the “fitness” of an idea other than its own popularity, which can lead to a tautological dead-end. While the meme idea may prove useful with more development, it currently just seems to primarily be a trendy intellectual way to dress up one’s own preferred functional or utilitarian attribution of purpose or usefulness. I don’t think it adds anything to the discussion at present, but that’s just me.

    I think Jeff is correct that some religions may supplant others in part because of social or political convenience, but questions remain - why did they persist prior to being supplanted and don’t the supplanting traditions have more to offer than political expedience? The issue of quality is one of “proof in the pudding” and a matter for each conscience to probe and explore, but in the larger debate here we see a classic dilemma in explaining cultural stasis and change. On the one hand, society is shaped by the collective will of its members (even if some members have a disproportionate influence), yet each member is shaped in part by society.

    While one underpinning of the debate is centered on the process of justifying the outcome (related to the aforementioned meme debate - the one that persists the longest and spreads the furthest is “best”), it seems like another significant underpinning of the current discussion is the perceived value of a belief or institution to the individual and the perceived value of a belief or instution to the society. Fausto and Peace Bang appear more sympathetic to the influence of the former, while Jeff is stressing the influence of the latter. Historians, sociologists, and anthropologists have been trying to unravel that knot for a while now. I fall back to simplicity, if not elegance, when asked what this kind of discovery means - “Err, uhhh…It’s complicated.”

    Comment by tinythinker — July 8, 2008 #

16. Man, do I miss Beauty Tips.

    Comment by Barbara K — July 8, 2008 #

17. Fausto, there are more UU Christians in seminary than you may be aware of.

    I’m certainly aware of them. On even-numbered days I’m probably even one myself (except for the “in seminary” part). Nevertheless, it seems to me that to be a UU Christian necessarily implies at least a certain degree of dissent from the central doctrinal tendency of Christianity, and even the central tendency of liberal Protestantism, especially as concerns christology. We might think our dissenting views are more rational or persuasive than the consensus position, but it would surprise me if anyone also considers it more successful.

    Comment by fausto — July 8, 2008 #

18. well i had a nice intelligent reply, but then i had mosquito-based technical problem (don’t ask).

    so i’ll just say ditto to jeff wilson’s posts.

    Comment by NDM — July 9, 2008 #

19. tiny thinker wrote:
    The meme hypothesis is shaky for several reasons, but the most important one is the failure to be significantly comparable to the actual components of biological heredity except for the most cartoonish view of “genes”. Another is that there is no standard for the “fitness” of an idea other than its own popularity, which can lead to a tautological dead-end.

    Actually, some of the most successful “memes” have features that protect them other competing “memes”:

    ** some discourage their hosts from questioning the ideas in the meme — reduces threat from competition

    ** some memes provide rewards for compliance and punishments for noncompliance (e.g. heaven and hell)

    This may explain why religions that discourage questioning, are promoted with an air of certainty, and offer heaven/hell in the afterlife are more successful memes than liberal religion.

    Comment by Steve Caldwell — July 9, 2008 #

20. Quick reply to Steve:

    It’s getting a little afield from the original topic, but your response doesn’t address the concerns I listed for the validity of the meme hypothesis nor the appearance that it is a handy way to justify one’s pre-existing notions explaining utility or success. For example, nothing in what you wrote requires either the term “meme” or the idea of “meme selection”. It doesn’t add anything of substance, it just re-phrases an observation in psuedo-Darwinian terminology and makes speculative assumptions about the nature of how knowledge is formed and re-formed in each generation. Currently meme-talk (named and promoted by Dawkins) is an under-developed extension of the selfish gene view of evolution (also named, shaped and popularized by Dawkins). Eventually it may have a chance to “grow up” as a useful voice in behavioral and social science, but for now it doesn’t have the weight. The danger with the over-application and loose usage of ideas such as Darwinism is that an idea that can be continually altered and fitted to accomodate and explain everything ultimately reveals little but our own preconceptions (and this is no less true in theology than in science!). I am not wishing to demolish meme-talk, I merely wish to sound a cautionary note that is often missed in an the excitement of applying a novel concept or paradigm.

    Comment by tinythinker — July 10, 2008 #

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