This brought a visitor to the blog: “grizzly bears knowing Jesus Christ is coming.”
The truth is that I did have Jesus Christ and a grizzly bear in one blog post.
Tag: Christianity
Following Up the Hint of Jesus’ Wife
The recent announcement of a bit of Coptic writing that apparently referred to Jesus’ wife has stirred up plenty of controversy. Was the inscription really as old as claimed? Was it a forgery? Did it really mean “wife”?
At the Bulletin for the Study of Religion blog, Ian Brown will bring you up to speed.
But whether or not GosJesWife was written in the 4th century or the 20th century is not actually all that interesting to me (for the record, I suspect it is 4th century, although here I defer to the papyrologists and paleographers who have also drawn that conclusion). Yes, I do Christian origins and am always happy with more data. But I am more interested in the ways in which the initial story was taken-up by the media, particularly the conservative reaction arguing it to be a modern forgery. Regarding the former, it seems we are still standing in the shadow of the Jesus Seminar. Popular interest is focused almost exclusively on the possibility that the historical Jesus was married, and not at all interested in the fact that, assuming its authenticity, people in the 4th century were telling stories about a married Jesus—a detail which I, for one, think is pretty neat! Regarding the latter, well, we are still in the shadow of the Jesus Seminar, only here we feel echoes of the conservative reaction against its version of the historical Jesus.
At Heterodoxology, Egil Asprem passes along some more commentary, focusing on the paleographic questions.
And the reaction of the Vatican is predictable.
Evidence of Jesus’ Wife?
You don’t think a good Jewish boy from a peasant culture got to be thirty years old without being married, do you?
Now there is textual evidence that suggests that he was.
“This fragment suggests that some early Christians had a tradition that Jesus was married,” Dr. [Karen] King said. “There was, we already know, a controversy in the second century over whether Jesus was married, caught up with a debate about whether Christians should marry and have sex.”
Was or was it not Mary Magdalene, that is the question. Or was she just a well-off woman who helped to finance the ministry, as so often happens? Or as the Gnostic gospels suggest, one of the disciples — maybe one with special privileges — which brings us back to the question of her possible spousal status. Or were there two Marys — Magdalene the patroness and Mary the wife?
The Historical Jesus and the Grizzly Bears
When it comes to who Jesus of Nazareth was, I tend to think that there is somebody behind the stories, a real person, not, for example, a mushroom. (Although that would make for great video.)
As Craig Keener argues in this column, it remains the simplest explanation at its counter-intuitive core:
Scholars’ confidence [in the historical Jesus] has nothing to do with theology but much to do with historiographic common sense. What movement would make up a recent leader, executed by a Roman governor for treason, and then declare, “We’re his followers”? If they wanted to commit suicide, there were simpler ways to do it.
On the other hand, there are people in some esoteric circles who think that the Jesus of the New Testament was a composite character, made of perhaps three individuals’ stories.
It works with grizzly bears.
Last month, on my birthday, M. and I made a sort of pilgrimage to the haunts of Old Mose, the last grizzly bear killed in central Colorado, on 30 April 1904. (The last known grizzly killed in Colorado died in 1979.)
When I lived in that county, I heard and read all the stories about how Old Mose was this terrible bear, killer of several humans and countless livestock, et cetera et cetera, who lived to be at least forty years old.
But a Colorado historian who dug into the story and conducted some elementary scientific research made a good case that Old Mose’s legend conflated the lives of at least three bears between the early 1880s and 1904. The big male grizzly killed in 1904 was simply too young to have done all that.
And this in an era of (by 1904) telephones, telegraphs, electric lights, railroads, and newspapers, not an antiquity of oral wonder stories and hand-copied manuscripts.
If it happens with bears, I wondered at the time, could it happen with prophets?
Still, I lean towards the single-Jesus theory. And if I could choose between bringing a messianic Jewish wonder-worker or a big grizzly bear back to walk this earth, I know which one I would pick.
Business Opportunity for the Next Generation
Tattoo removal. It‘s starting to take off (pun intended).
The psychological motivations for tattoo removal (change of lifestyle and relationship status, changes in body and skin over the years, upward mobility in society and employment, etc.) are a constant, and will lead to an even larger market for tattoo removal than currently exists today.
And some related critiquing:
By enlarging ourselves with tattoos, we’re belittling ourselves in the process. It’s a sign of our low expectations that having control over flesh decorations is considered to be the limit of our capacities as an individual.
Kind of related—how do you as a priest dress to be counter-hip so that hipsters will “relate” to you? We’ve been down this road before. Anyone remember “folk Masses” with tambourines?
Be authentic. Be real. Invest in a chain of tattoo-removal clinics. That is all.
Eating Tomatoes Makes You a Christian
Salafist Muslims proclaim that eating tomatoes might lead you down the false path to Christianity.
The group posted a photo on its page of a tomato – which appears to reveal the shape of a cross after being cut in half – along with the message: “Eating tomatoes is forbidden because they are Christian. [The tomato] praises the cross instead of Allah and says that Allah is three (a reference to the Trinity).
[God help us]. I implore you to spread this photo because there is a sister from Palestine who saw the prophet of Allah [Mohammad] in a vision and he was crying, warning his nation against eating them [tomatoes]. If you don’t spread this [message], know that it is the devil who stopped you.”
Silly fundamentalists. Eating tomatoes will lead you to worship Coatlicue.
Pentagram Pizza for April 21st
Week-old pizza from the back of the refrigerator …
• Here’s an idea for a novel: “two down-on-their-luck entrepreneurs who stumble upon the idea of reviving for-profit idolatry. Selling statues of household gods to the masses, and building a neo-pagan religion around it.” Um, I think that people have been doing this for some time.
• Circus Breivik. Norwegian scholar of esotericism Egil Asprem analyzes the trial of Anders Behring Breivik. (He wrote about the shootings for the current Pomegranate.)
This trial will be about two things: psychiatry and ideology. Two drastically conflicting reports on Breivik’s mental health have already ensured this. Added to this, of course, is Breivik’s own clearly stated wish to be judged as sane, and have his actions confirmed as ideologically motivated.
• Teaching classical philosophy to Brazilian schoolchildren:
I assured the students that until the nineteenth century hardly any philosopher was an atheist. Plato’s Euthyphro—with its argument about the relationship between ethics and the will of the gods—gets us into a lively discussion.
* This is called “edgy, irreverent outreach” by some of today’s Christians Jesus Followers. I think the pastor needs to look up “pathos” in the rhetorical dictionary, because he is doing it wrong. But to be fair, some long-ago saints would have agreed with him.
• Alcohol “sharpens the mind.” But “beer goggles” are real too.
Someone is Stealing the Saints’ Parts of Europe
Of Ireland, at least, where a rash of thefts of saintly body parts has the police baffled.
The only thing creepier is imaging who might be buying them from the thieves, if the dean’s hypothesis is correct:
The latest in a series of such thefts involved the removal of the preserved heart of St. Laurence O’Toole, Dublin’s 12th-century patron saint, from the city’s historic Christ Church Cathedral. As there was no sign of forced entry to the cathedral itself, the dean of Christ Church, Dermot Dunne, initially believed the thief had probably hidden in the building when it closed on Friday evening, taken the artifact overnight and simply walked out the next morning.
“Maybe someone stole it to order; it certainly seems plausible,” Dean Dunne said Monday in an interview at Christ Church. “Or maybe a religious fanatic wants the relic and paid somebody to steal it.”
I know that (alleged) bits of Gautama Buddha are preserved in South Asia, but no one goes into keeping body parts like Catholic and Orthodox Christians. It’s all quite magickal.
The custom was well-advanced by the mid-fourth century, as Julian, the last Pagan emperor, was quite grossed out by it and often referred to Christian churches as charnel houses.
Aside from the Egyptians, most Pagan cultures of his day considered corpses to be polluting, full of miasma, and something to be gotten rid of — burned, buried, or sealed away in a sarcophagus (a word that literally means “flesh-eater,” since they were usually carved from limestone). And even the Egyptians did not stack mummies in their temples.
The last time I thought about saints’ relics was a couple of years ago when a priest was giving me and some colleagues a tour of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City.
We had walked around into the apse, and while a certain Italian Catholic lawyer (scholars of new religions will know who I mean) dropped to his knees in adoration of the Sacrament, I was studying two reliquaries holding (alleged) bone fragments of Mary Magdalene.
Each one had a tiny bone fragment smaller than the nail of my little finger, encased in a glass capsule that was in turn decorated and encircled with gold. These inner cases, smaller than a lipstick tube, were then held in a larger, glass-walled box affixed to a wall. At least I remember there being two small capsules, although this website page speaks of one (larger?) reliquary.
There are more relics in the altar.
Irreverently, all that I could think of was some monk long ago sitting at a chopping block with a big knife or cleaver.
Behind him is the abbot, telling someone, “Brother Anthony’s knife skills are superb. You should watch him dice an onion or cut up a chicken. We will have plenty of relics to distribute to the faithful this way, and they will show their gratitude with generous gifts.”
Meanwhile, what are they doing with the heart of St. Laurence O’Toole?
Learning about Pagans for the Purpose of Converting Them
Last month, I answered some questions from a reporter for a Christian news site.
He had such response that now he is on the Pagan beat. So I give you “A Peek at Modern Paganism, Part One” and “Part Two.”
Soon — wait for it — you meet that reliable figure, the ex-Pagan who found Jesus.
(Sorry, but there is a long history of fraud about that. One example here: John Todd. I mentioned Todd to the reporter, Mark Hensch, but Christian reporters rarely seem to investigate the claims of ex-Pagans on the lecture trail. Todd was brought down by Christian journalists, it’s true, but he is just one example of the type.)
Understanding such multiplicity, says former Santeria-high-priest-turned-evangelical-Christian-author John Ramirez, is vital to befriending and ministering to pagans. Christians need grace, compassion and mercy, he said, to connect with their pagan peers.
Interestingly, the next expert quoted is James Beverley, a Canadian whom I know slightly from academic study of new religious movements, in which he is active. But here he has his theologian hat on:
“Witchcraft ultimately fails in the mythic and legendary nature of its gods and goddesses,” Beverley writes in Nelson’s Illustrated Guide to Religions’ chapter on Wicca. “The Roman, Celtic, Nordic and Greek deities dwell only in the followers’ imaginations. The lack of historical trustworthiness concerning Artemis or Zeus or Diana or Isis is in direct contrast the historical nature of the Gospel accounts of Jesus Christ.”
Bottom line: be strong in your faith, learn to appreciate nature, and you can get close to the Pagans.
World Religions versus the Blue Bra Revolution
Washington Post writer Sally Quinn looks at photos of Egyptian soldiers beating an abaya-shrouded Muslim woman, and a light bulb goes on for her about major religions:
Why would men, particularly under the guise of religious belief, want to keep women down? Because they understand that women’s sexuality is something that they cannot live without, it is something that renders them powerless. Women can have babies, women can breastfeed, women are the lifegivers.
Sounds like much of the Pagan discourse beginning in the 1970s, if not earlier! Read more about her hoped-for “blue bra revolution.”
In related news, Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority is nervous.
For decades Copts have suffered attacks by Islamists who view them as “kafir”—Arabic for nonbelievers. But there is now a sense among Middle East experts that they have become more vulnerable since the revolution.
This year, mobs have looted and attacked Coptic churches, homes and shops throughout Egypt. Churches have been burned down, and one Copt had his ear cut off by a Muslim cleric invoking Islamic law.
Strong gains by Islamist parties in the recent elections have further raised fears among the Christian minority that they won’t have a place in the new Egypt.
An acquaintance of mine is married to an Egyptian Christian woman. Her parents recently came for what he said is a month-long visit — I see them around town with their daughter now and then. I am starting to wonder if they actually plan to go home or to seek asylum. Maybe they are weighing their options.