A couple of weeks ago I posted this link to Apostate’s compelling essay, Why Honor Killings Are A Religious Issue. In light of the New Yorker discussion of the extent to which Islamophobia is racist, sassysenora posed the following question:
i agree completely that attacks on Muslims are more than simple racial bigotry. the bigotry is partly racial, partly cultural, partly political, and partly religious. invidious, uninformed stereotypes underlie all those dimensions. my problem with your approach is that i thought you were opposing that type of argument when you endorsed “every line” of Apostate’s article “Why Honor Killings Are A Religious Issue”.
Apostate condemned Antonova’s article which, while condemning honor killings, argued that they are not per se Islamic but more cultural (i.e., Islam does not always embrace or embody Arab cultural traditions such as honor killings depending upon the culture of its adherents). to me, Apostate’s post was in large part an explicit rejection of the idea that honor killings are cultural as well as religious. Even in non-Arab cultures, she asserts: “Islam IS Arab culture, to a very great degree. Arab culture IS Islam to a very great degree.” Apostate rejects the view that honor killings are not an inherent part of Islam even though (1) honor killings don’t exist in non-Arab Muslim countries, e.g., Indonesia or West Africa and (2) honor killings cross religious divides but tend to follow cultural ones, i.e., if Muslims in a country practice it, usually so do Hindus, Sikhs and Christians.
perhaps we interpreted Apostate’s and Antonova’s articles differently, but your positions seem inconsistent to me. how can you say that honor killings are not partly cultural and partly political as well as partly religious but then say that Islamophobia is only partly racial? it seems to me that implies that Muslims are not motivated by things like culture and politics as well as religion and gender while we’re more complex. If you are not Islamophobic, why do you “embrace” Apostate’s argument that Islam inherently promotes honor killings even though some Imams insist that it condemns them?
I wrote a 500-word comment in reply and then realized that if I’m going to be writing a 500-word comment, I might as well make it a 500-word post. Especially since the intersection of religion and feminism is one of my favorite topics. So here’s my answer to sassysenora:
First of all, I do think we are interpreting Apostate’s post differently.
I read Apostate’s post as objecting to the facile Western (liberal) notion that Islam is a nice idealistic religion that floats above unpleasant cultural practices, and never the twain shall meet. Her point was that religion and culture are inextricably intertwined. Religion codifies culture, and culture reflects religion. You seem to read her as saying that honor killings and other horrors are religious, not cultural, but what she was saying, in my interpretation, is that this is a false dichotomy.
Islam developed in an extremely patriarchal environment (the medieval Middle East) and is saturated with misogynistic notions. There are a few branches of Islam that attempt to transcend the misogyny and embrace a more gender-balanced view, usually because they’re situated in a different cultural environment (for example, the semi-matriarchal tribes of Indonesia), but it’s an uphill struggle. Judaism had a similar start in life, and it took 3000 years to get to the Reform branch and Jewish feminism — and we still have the Orthodox. Christianity took 2000 years to travel that road, and we still have the fundies and the Catholics. It is even arguable (and I have certainly argued it) that the sexism embedded in the deep-history layers of Judaism and Christianity is sufficient to prevent those religions from ever completely shedding their patriarchal frames, though of course many modern, enlightened adherents disagree.
The situation with Islam is even more dire. It’s a much younger religion, and has not encountered an Enlightenment-like revision. It has not been tamed by secularism, as both Christianity and Judaism have been in the West. And it is rooted in a cultural milieu that is more misogynistic than the historical seats of worldwide Christianity and Judaism — both of which were born in the same sands as Islam, but found their destiny in Europe. (Yes, medieval Europe was marginally less patriarchal than the medieval Middle East; that’s not cultural chauvinism, just historical reality.) So it’s easy to look at Islam and wonder how on earth it can ever get to the place where, say, Reform Judaism is now.
But I hope it’s possible, mostly because my preferred alternative (the disappearance of all patriarchal religions from the face of the Earth) seems unlikely. The modern pace of cultural evolution is so rapid that there’s hope. We live in a global village, and memes are the world ocean. Cultural evolution occurs in decades, not centuries. Theoretically, “reform Islam” is a not-impossible goal.
I really don’t know how to help make that happen, though. I could write at length here about the obstacles — political, ideological — but maybe I’ll leave that for the comment thread.
Posted by Violet under Gender Issues, Godbags, Religion, Election 2008 on July 16, 2008, 9:37 pm EST
23 Comments »
In a good but mis-titled article, Steven Stark comments on the deep weirdness of the current movement to get Hillary to quit:
It is, in truth, an argument virtually without precedent in modern political history, at least at this stage of such a close race. And while it does have its origins in an effort to preserve party unity, it also has its roots in an odd and vitriolic crusade to purge the Clintons and hand the nomination to a candidate who has yet, after all, to win a single large state’s primary (other than his own), let alone the nomination.
The fact is that, until now, candidates have rarely, if ever, faced such a concerted movement (featuring prominent names, such as Bill Richardson, and a column in Slate titled “The Hillary Deathwatch”), urging them to drop out before their rival has clinched the nomination. To review the history:
• In 1988, Jesse Jackson took his hopeless campaign against winner Michael Dukakis all the way to the convention, often to great media praise.
• In 1980, Ted Kennedy carried his run against Jimmy Carter all the way to the convention, even though it was clear he had been routed.
• In 1976, Ronald Reagan contested the “inevitability” of Gerald Ford all the way to the convention. Few, then or since, have ever thought to criticize Reagan’s failure to step aside and let Ford assume the mantle.
• Also in 1976, three candidates — Mo Udall, Jerry Brown, and Frank Church — ran against Jimmy Carter all the way through the final primaries, even though Carter seemed more than likely to be the eventual nominee.
• Even in 1960, Lyndon Johnson and Adlai Stevenson fought the “certain” nomination of John F. Kennedy all the way to the convention floor.
In fact, until this year, it’s been an axiom of American politics that candidates are allowed to pursue their runs until they decide to drop out — which is usually, by the way, when they run out of money. Even Mike Huckabee kept running against John McCain in this campaign long after it was obvious he had no hope of winning the GOP nod.
Okay, class, who can tell me what all those candidates had in common? Starts with a p…..
That’s right! Penis! Yes, all candidates with penises have the right to compete.
Clearly the rules are different for penis-less lady candidates:
Yet in one of the tightest races in modern history — before the opponent has come close to clearly clinching the nomination, before a number of voters have been given the chance to have their voices heard, and when Clinton still has a chance, albeit a slim one, to win the prize, she is continually vilified for failing to see the light and bow out. What gives?
I know! I know! Pick me!
…Clinton is being held to a different standard than virtually any other candidate in history. That’s being driven by Clinton fatigue, but it’s also being driven by a concerted campaign that examines every action the Clintons take and somehow finds the basest, most self-serving motivation for its existence. Thus, in this case, when Clinton is simply doing what everyone else has always done, she’s constantly attacked as an obsessed and crazed egomaniac, bent on self-aggrandizement at the expense of her party. Is there a fair amount of sexism in the way she’s being asked to get out of the way so a man can have the job? You be the judge.
No, there’s not a fair amount of sexism. There’s a huge amount of sexism, both conscious and unconscious. All this talk of Clinton fatigue is bullshit — in 2004 the party was wishing they could re-nominate Big Dog after his speech at the convention. What’s going on now is that lay-deez aren’t supposed to reach for power, and those who do are evil unnatural witches who consort with demons, eat babies, and fuck ponies for fun.
Can anybody name me a single über-powerful woman in the entire history of Western civilization who hasn’t been vilified as a freak of nature? (And if you’re thinking Elizabeth I, think again. She was constantly whispered about and her whole “Virgin Queen” shtick was a canny counter-move to replace the usual sex-fiend demonization of strong women with an almost equally unnatural asexual image.)
But there’s also this:
Finally, there have been others who have observed how the Obama campaign resembles a religious movement (in both its positive and negative aspects). Thus, we have the growing messianism of Obama supporters — both on the Web and in the media — whose comments seem to convey the strong impression that it’s time for everyone to participate in the coronation of the chosen one.
The religious fanaticism surrounding Obama is utterly antithetical to democracy. The children (biologically and/or mentally) who worship him don’t think of Barry as a candidate for office in a representative government; they think of him as a messiah. How dare anyone oppose Him? And that the person opposing him is an Evil Mommy just makes it worse, because Mommies aren’t supposed to compete! Mommies are supposed to sacrifice everything so their babies can be happy. Evil Mommy! Evil!
Posted by Violet under Religion, Election 2008 on April 4, 2008, 3:46 pm EST
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From Keith Yandell’s The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Cambridge University Press, 1994):
We can now put the view that religious experience provides evidence in favor of [the claim that] God exists along these lines: If one has an apparent experience of God under conditions in which there is no reason to think either that one would seem to experience God even if there were no God or that one could not discover, if God does not exist, that this is so, then one has experiential evidence that God exists.
Well, the devil’s in the details.
If you’re having trouble navigating Yandell’s syntax (and God knows I don’t blame you) you may be wondering why I find this so amusing. Okay, here’s what Yandell is saying:
If you feel like you’re personally experiencing God, then this feeling counts as solid evidence for God’s existence if the following two things are true —
- There’s no chance you could just be imagining things, and
- There’s no real way that God’s existence or non-existence could be empirically determined.
Right. Just sort out those two minor, minor points — mere bagatelles, really — and we’re good to go.
Meanwhile, I’m busy organizing our new religion. The encyclical is coming soon.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Religion on December 30, 2007, 8:16 pm EST
2 Comments »
The blogosphere is picking up on a story that started coming in over the wires last week: religious vigilantes in Basra have murdered at least 40 women in the past year for various infractions of Islamic law. Typically the victim’s body is mutilated and dumped with a note pinned to it explaining whatever monumental death-worthy crime against the universe the woman had committed (wearing lipstick, not wearing a headscarf, etc.)
The Washington Post first ran this story last week, and here’s what the page looked like:
Okay, see the internal banner ad up there above the article? The one that’s floating context-sensitively over a story about batshit crazy god-botherers who are on a killing spree against women in the name of religion? Here’s what it says, in case the type is too small for you to read:
“On Faith | Join Two Nobel Prize winners, Iran’s former president, the author of “The Purpose Driven Life” and others in a dynamic conversation about faith and its impact on the world.”
Click on that banner ad and you’ll be whisked to a soft, gooey, bluish page with padded walls where the Washington Post is hosting a tasteful symposium on “faith.” Contributors include Rick Warren, he of the purpose driven life, a particularly piquant presence in this instance since Warren is basically the modern American corporocraptastic Ray Kroc billions-and-billions-served version of the serial killers in Basra. Theocracy in a Hawaiian shirt with a side order of fries.
Here’s my contribution to this oh-so-dynamic paid endorsement of horseshit: let’s stop calling it “faith.” Let’s call it something else, something more accurate. How about “rationale for the most evil bloodthirsty shit ever committed in the history of the world”? Or “age-old excuse to persecute women”? Or just “festering brain sickness”?
It would put a different spin on things, wouldn’t it?
President Jesus would deliver faux-earnest sound bites about the importance of Festering Brain Sickness-Based Initiatives. Wanna-Be President Romney would give a speech on “Festering Brain Sickness in America” (money quote: “Festering brain sickness requires freedom, but freedom also requires festering brain sickness”). The Washington Post would lure readers to its blue padded room with a banner urging them to “Join Two Nobel Prize winners and others in a dynamic conversation about festering brain sickness and its impact on the world.” Once there, readers would find a selection of articles on “choosing a festering brain sickness” that’s right for them.
I like it.
Posted by The Ghost of Violet under Godbags, Religion on December 10, 2007, 4:05 pm EST
6 Comments »
There’s a lot of interesting stuff in this Harris Poll on belief in God, but what intrigues me is the question of God’s gender.
More than a third of respondents think of God as male, while only 1% think of God as female. Most of that 1% is coming from women: 2% of women think of God as female while less than one-half of one-percent of men do.
Of the religious affiliations shown in the results, Jews are the most likely to perceive God as female: 7%. Born-Again Christians are the least likely (gee, I wonder why) at less than one-half of one-percent.
Via Kalibhakta.
Posted by Violet under Religion on November 16, 2006, 6:42 pm EST
6 Comments »
In this amusing interview in Salon, Richard Dawkins discusses why religion is both inane and dangerous. Of course he’s mostly talking about the Abrahamic religions, because as he accurately observes, belief in Apollo and Thor has pretty much died out.
What I’ve been wondering for about 35 years now is why the believers in Yahweh are so convinced that their fairy tales are more plausible than the pagan myths they supplanted. Consider:
Danae and Zeus
Mary and Yahweh
What is the difference between these two pictures?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Violet under Religion, Recommended on October 14, 2006, 4:46 am EST
42 Comments »
Christian godbag quotes a Byzantine emperor who thought Islam was irrational and violent.
Muslim godbags around the world erupt in protest, responding with irrationality and violence (or threats thereof).
A pox on both their houses.
(*By the way, this is the most accessible summary I’ve seen of the Pope’s widely misunderstood remarks. The theological question he was addressing was whether rationality is an attribute of the godhead or merely a Western conceit.)
Posted by Violet under Godbags, Religion on September 17, 2006, 8:19 am EST
16 Comments »
According to a new study released by Baylor University, Americans — who are already the most god-sick people in the world, after the Philippines and Vanuatu — actually worship four distinct versions of the Great Godbag in the Sky. Here are the four gods, as defined in the Baylor study (the numbers indicate the percent of respondents who identified that god as the god):
Authoritarian God (31.4%): “Individuals who believe in the Authoritarian God tend to think that God is highly involved in their daily lives and world affairs. They tend to believe that God helps them in their decision-making and is also responsible for global events such as economic upturns or tsunamis. They also tend to feel that God is quite angry and is capable of meting out punishment to those who are unfaithful or ungodly.”
Distant God (24.4%): “Believers in a Distant God think that God is not active in the world and not especially angry either. These individuals tend towards thinking about God as a cosmic force which set the laws of nature in motion. As such, God does not “do” things in the world and does not hold clear opinions about our activities or world events.”
Benevolent God (23.0%): “Like believers in the Authoritarian God, believers in a Benevolent God tend to think that God is very active in our daily lives. But these individuals are less likely to believe that God is angry and acts in wrathful ways. Instead, the Benevolent God is mainly a force of positive influence in the world and is less willing to condemn or punish individuals.”
Critical God (16.0%): “Believers in a Critical God feel that God really does not interact with the world. Nevertheless, God still observes the world and views the current state of the world unfavorably. These individuals feel that God’s displeasure will be felt in another life and that divine justice may not be of this world.”
This is interesting, though I’m rather annoyed by the clumsiness of the published report. For example, the authors include a section on “The War on Terror” in which they list the first question as, “Was the United States justified in entering Iraq?” Nice GOP framing! And in the section of the report on belief in god, they helpfully explain that, “Atheists are certain that God does not exist. Nevertheless, atheists may still hold very strong perspectives concerning the morality of human behavior and ideals of social order but have no place for the supernatural in their larger worldview.” Only a godbag could even think it necessary to explain that people who don’t believe in god can still possess a sense of morality and ethics. The actual survey instrument doesn’t include these prejudicial references, which is the main thing, but the reporting is sloppy.
Posted by Violet under Godbags, Religion on September 13, 2006, 8:21 pm EST
6 Comments »
A friendly reader has asked my opinion on yesterday’s Salon piece about the womenpriests movement in the Catholic Church:
The hierarchy insists that the church has a constant tradition of ordaining only men. But what about Junia the apostle and Phoebe the deacon, in the Epistle of St. Paul to Romans? What about those tomb inscriptions for “Leta presbitera” and “Guilia Runa, woman priest”? What about Bishop Theodora, über-apostle Mary Magdalene…?
To which the diehards respond by putting their fingers in their ears and saying, “I can’t hear you”:
Not surprisingly, church spokespeople vigorously denounce the movement for women’s ordination. William Donahue of the Catholic League has dismissed the ordained women out of hand and declared their supporters to be “mad feminists” from “the asylum.” In an e-mail response to my specific questions, director of communications Robert Lockwood called the rich concrete evidence of women’s ordination “archaeological myth-making of the Da Vinci Code variety” and “hardly relevant.”
Aside from the fact that members of the batshit-crazy ultra-conservative Catholic League are not “church spokespeople,” this pretty well captures the controversy. So who’s right?
The pro-women’s ordination people, of course. Modern scholars recognize now that early Christianity had a remarkably radical gender-egalitarian component. (Well, as much as anything can be “recognized” about the lost past; what I’m going to say here represents the best historical reconstruction.) Probably Jesus’s core followers consisted of his brother James, Mary Magdalene, some guy named Cephas/Peter, and a few others — possibly more women than men. (The quaint notion of the Twelve Apostles is considered a late invention of the Gospel writers, created to provide a match with the Twelve Tribes of Israel.) At this remove nobody can really be sure what Jesus was about, but something that comes through pretty strongly in the earliest relics of his movement is an extreme leveling of traditional distinctions: between rich and poor, between male and female, between Jew and gentile.
For quite awhile after Jesus’s death women continued to be treated as equals — Paul refers to women as apostles, and their names are prominent in the fledgling religion. When the inevitable splintering of the movement began, different trends emerged: certain groups reverted to a more traditionally Jewish male-dominated structure, while others continued to embrace a philosophy of gender equality. There was, by the way, quite a bit of divergence in early Christianity, with many competing sects and great disagreement as to what the whole thing meant, who Jesus was, how followers should behave, and so forth.
Towards the end of the first century, the mainstreaming of the religion began in earnest. It had become clear that, pace Jesus and early Paul, the world was not actually going to end anytime soon, and so the most prominent Christian groups began shedding their radicalism and accommodating their religion to life in the Roman Empire. That’s really what spelled the downfall of women in the church, because gender equality was simply too radical for the mainstream culture. It had to go — think the Mormons jettisoning polygamy as the price of joining American society.
In the second century there continued to be a plethora of competing Christian sects, but the gender-egalitarian groups were becoming more and more marginalized. The mainstream church fathers, who strongly favored male supremacy, were positioning themselves as the voice of orthodoxy, and they did not hesitate to criticize all other forms of Christianity as “heretical.”* The war continued on paper, with the canonical gospels and the letters of Paul being re-worked to downplay women’s roles. Virtually all of the anti-woman passages in Paul are late forgeries created to justify the new policy of subordinating women. Other texts were also edited — and paintings even effaced — to remove the evidence of female apostles.
By the time Christianity was adopted as the state religion of the Roman Empire, 300 years after Jesus’s death, the evidence of the early days had been sufficiently suppressed that the few remaining egalitarian sects could be safely ridiculed as freakish heretics. Or as William Donahue says, “mad feminists” from “the asylum.”
*There was more at stake than just the role of women. The struggle to define what was “orthodox” and what was “heretical” encompassed many issues, ranging from the profound to the prosaic.
Posted by Violet under Random Pedantry, Godbags, Religion on August 1, 2006, 2:39 am EST
12 Comments »
Well, I guess that settles that:
A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lion in a Kiev, Ukraine, zoo after he crept into the animal’s enclosure, a zoo official said Monday.
“The man shouted, ‘God will save me, if he exists,’ lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions,” the official said. “A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery.”
The attack happened Sunday when the zoo had many visitors.
Posted by Violet under Religion on June 6, 2006, 5:05 am EST
34 Comments »
At long last! Part 1 on Christianity and Part 2 on Islam were ages ago — the Planck era, I think — and I apologize for the unaccountable delay in delivering Part 3. Let’s just blame it on alien abduction and leave it at that.
Part 3 is much longer than Parts 1 and 2, largely because I feel obligated after such a long wait to offer a little more than bullet points. Actually it’s too long — way, way too long, despite several attempts to edit it down to blogular dimensions and remove academic language. At any rate, what I’m focusing on here is actually the origin and history of Israel up to the period when the books of the Bible began to be written. The subsequent development of Judaism as a religion I’ll leave aside. (And I beg the indulgence of those who know this subject well; I’m writing here for a general audience.)
You know, of course, the biblical version of events: The patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob). The Twelve Tribes (descended from the twelve sons of Jacob). The bondage in Egypt and the Exodus. Moses and the Ten Commandments. The Conquest. The rise of the monarchy — Saul, David, Solomon — followed by the split into two separate kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The fall of Israel to Assyria; the fall of Judah and Babylonian Captivity.
Of that sequence of events, only the last sentence and a half corresponds to what modern scholars consider history. Everything before that is legend, with the transition from folklore to fact occurring somewhere during the monarchy.
This should not be surprising, since none of the Bible was actually written until the 7th century B.C.E., shortly before the little kingdom of Judah was conquered by Babylon. In other words, the Bible came to life as the last gasp of a people, a nation, on the edge of oblivion. The priests and scribes who wrote and compiled these books were deliberately fashioning a sacred mythology to unify the nation, and they pulled in everything floating in the cultural consciousness — folklore, hero legends, etiological myths, scraps of historical annals from the court, even their own Temple regulations. Like all pre-modern people, they created a simplified fantasy-version of history that matched their own contemporary sensibilities of how things must have been. Most particularly, they retrojected their own monotheistic worship of Yahweh deep into the past, when in fact that was a very late development.
It was this literary masterstroke that ensured that the people of Israel (really just Judah by that time) would maintain a strong sense of themselves as an ethnic, religious entity, despite the inevitable death of their nation-state. It’s a remarkable story they put together. Most of it just isn’t true.
On to the deconstruction!
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Violet under Random Pedantry, Religion, Recommended on May 19, 2006, 4:30 am EST
39 Comments »
Someone said that on a blog recently — I don’t recall where — and it’s true. Beyond all the differences in rites and deities and theological niceties, popular religion the world over boils down to belief in a parental Magic Fairy who will help you if you ask nicely.
This article reviews a new book on the spiritual lives of American teenagers, whose beliefs can be summarized as follows:
In religious terms, according to teenagers, God cares that each teenager is happy and that each teenager has high self-esteem. Morality has nothing to do with authority, mutual obligations, or sacrifice… “This God is not demanding,” say the authors. “He actually can’t be, because his job is to solve our problems and make people feel good.”
Similarly, in Europe they’ve got a new fad called Cosmic Ordering, which dispenses with the Magic Fairy altogether and just focuses 100% on the wish fulfillment. The idea is to “place your order direct with the Cosmos - the universe - and wait for it to come true.”
This is pretty much what religion has always been about. The exciting new feature here is that divine blessings are no longer tied to how righteous we are or whether we’ve performed certain rituals properly. We’re just entitled to have good things happen to us, and it’s God’s job (or the Cosmos’s) to make those dreams come true.
Meanwhile, some men’s movement freaks are worrying that Christianity in America is too “feminized.” They’re disgusted by the promotion of pansy-ass values like love and tolerance, which they blame for low church attendance among men. Their solution is to get some kind of macho vibe going that the guys can tune into. An auto repair demo as part of the Sunday sermon, ESPN on a TV above the pulpit, maybe a Sharper Image outlet in the fellowship hall. That kind of thing.* Though if these other two articles are any indication, all they really need to do is start promoting the idea that God doles out porn and Viagra to everyone who asks, and if you wish hard enough (!) he’ll send you a couple of Playboy Bunnies and a giant outdoor grill. With a rotisserie. And a big-screen high-definition TV. And a motorcycle. Maybe a boat.
Thanks to Tom and Kalibhakta for the links!
*I wish. Actually it’s much more sinister than that.
Posted by Violet under Godbags, Religion on May 1, 2006, 12:20 am EST
20 Comments »
Where do they get these reporters? The traditional Easter article from yesterday’s Washington Post revisits the historicity of Jesus’s resurrection in view of contemporary scholarship — except that the reporter gets everything wrong.
In the past two decades, there has been a heightened scrutiny of Scripture, with basic Christian tenets such as the Resurrection challenged by biblical scholars and others in their search for historical facts about Jesus.
In the past two decades? More like in the past century.
But in recent years, there has been a rise in the popularity and stature of books that embrace Dickerson’s traditional view of Easter, experts say.
There has? This is huge news to me. I’ve been involved in New Testament studies for 25 years, and I had no idea. What books could she possibly be talking about?
Two books, “The Case for Christ” and “The Case for Easter: A Journalist Investigates the Evidence for the Resurrection,” have sold a combined 4 million copies. Both were written by Lee Strobel, a former Chicago Tribune editor and atheist who became an evangelical pastor.
Oh, those books! But those aren’t scholarly texts; they’re just tracts in paperback form. That’s like citing ‘Our Sunday Visitor’ as a counterpoint to Hans Kung. “Well, Kung believes the resurrection never happened, but this week’s church bulletin says it did!”
And the reference to a rise in the “stature” of these books is just bizarre. Their stature in the field of New Testament studies is the same as it’s ever been: non-existent. Maybe the reporter means their stature in the eyes of the Walmart shoppers who buy them.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Violet under Religion on April 17, 2006, 5:40 am EST
85 Comments »
Sometimes I think a sub-par education is an actual requirement for a job as a reporter. They must give these guys tests to make sure they have almost no knowledge of the world, of history, religion, literature, science, anything.
These are the actual headlines today on the Gospel of Judas story:
“New Gospel Tells Judas’s Side of Story”
“Judas: This Is What Really Happened”
“Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him”
“The Good News On Judas, Maybe He Wasn’t So Bad”
“Ancient Text Says Judas Followed Orders”
Holy Fucking Mother of God, people. All of the gospels, canonical and noncanonical, were written decades after Jesus’s death. They are all pseudonymous. They are not eyewitness accounts, they are not reliable reports of what happened. None of them were written by the people whose names are attached to them. They are all creedal statements generated by individual faith communities decades after the events they purport to describe, and they all use the names of famous apostles to lend authenticity to their particular theological vision.
The Gospel of Judas wasn’t written by Judas, and reading it isn’t going to tell us what really went down with the whole betrayal deal (which itself was probably a fiction invented by another pseudonymous gospel writer). The Gospel of Phillip wasn’t written by Phillip. The Gospel of Thomas wasn’t written by Thomas. The Gospel of John wasn’t written by John. The Gospel of Matthew wasn’t written by Matthew. The Gospel of Luke wasn’t written by anybody who knew Paul personally, and the Gospel of Mark wasn’t written by Peter’s little friend.
Jesus.
Posted by Violet under Religion on April 7, 2006, 2:58 pm EST
21 Comments »
