Revealing
Some interesting book reviews in the last two New Yorkers, both teaching us about unexpected origins.
There's Dahlia Lithwick's discussion of Dale Carpenter's book on Lawrence v. Texas (2003), the case that struck down America's sodomy laws. Gay legal advocacy groups saw change in the wind and had been looking for a case that could get Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), which upheld such laws, overturned. This one seemed an odd choice, but sodomy prosecutions were rare enough that, as long as they discussed principles and avoided the principal actors, it was worth a shot.
See, the opinion is about the dignity of intimate relationships, and how the state shouldn't mess with them. But actually, the two plaintiffs, Lawrence and Garner, weren't a couple and weren't having sex the night in question. What happened, apparently, was four men were partying at Lawrence's place. One of them, jealous of his partner Garner, slipped out and called the police, claiming something was going on with a gun. The cops broke in and didn't find any gun, but did arrest Lawrence and Garner and charge them with sodomy.
Many Supreme Court cases have odd histories. From the beginning of our republic lawyers have desired the Supreme Court settle big issues, but couldn't do it without a case or controversy. So they've often searched for cases which, by the time they reach the high court, have left the original parties far behind.
Revelation could have been consigned to the pile with other blasphemous material, except Athanasius was a strong supporter in the fourth century when the canon was created. He saw how John's vision fit quite well with his own vision of fighting heresies. And so the book has been with the Western World ever since. It's interesting to speculate how things would have been different if the New Testament didn't end that way.
PS Speaking of origins, there's also an interesting piece on the scientific controversy regarding the evolution of altruism, but it can't be read on the internet. If I understand it, a new group, challenging the conventional view, believes altruism can't be explained without reference to group selection. The problem is writer Jonah Lehrer doesn't take sides--this might be a good thing in much journalism, but from what I understand, the new argument is not taken very seriously. (The concept of group selection keeps popping up in evolutionary studies, but it doesn't have much of a track record as a useful explanation for anything.)
posted by LAGuy @ 12:01 AM
10 Comments:
Of course the interesting history here is that the 1986 sodomy case was called "Hardwick" though did note that commentators took the nontraditional tack as referring to the case as "Bowers"- the name of the prosecutor or AG (equivalent of calling the Miranda warnings, the Arizona warnings), I guess, to avoid all the tittering.
though, come to think of it, Bowers is uncomfortably close to "bowels."
Love how things get names, especially court precedents- i.e. the citizens are certainly not united on the Citizens United case.
Roe Vs. Wade is two ways to cross water. Actually, when you think about it, Roe is a kind of egg.
Just FYI, the third paragraph in the article about Pagels summarizes the parts of her argument that are not original but are accepted by the mainstream of secular Biblical criticism. The fourth paragraph summarizes what she adds to this. Mainstream secular scholarship rejects most of Pagels' ideas.
Also, mainstream scholarship dates the beginning of Christian Gnosticism to the mid- second century CE. Pagels and the Claremont school are in the minority in dating it much earlier.
By the way, it's a myth (albeit a common one) that Athanasius' list of books in 367 CE settled the New Testament canon. Basil disputed the status of Revelation even after that; it was really in 382 that the issue was settled. Also, two-thirds of the New Testament (the four Gospels, Acts, thirteen of the Pauline letters, and 1 John) had been universally accepted since the early second century; the debate was about the remainder of the canon.
All this aside, your primary point about "what would have happened if Revelation had not been part of the canon" is a good one. Most Christians throughout history haven't focused on it much, but periodically there have been movements that made it central to their arguments -- including modern Dispensationalist theology.
My bad: it was Gregory of Nazianzus, not Basil.
Personally I don't believe the mainstream secular explanation of Revelation. Secular Biblical scholarship and conservative Christian Biblical scholarship will probably never agree on certain points, since the latter begins with the axioms that miracles don't happen and miraculous predictions of the future don't happen. However, there are many places where the mainstream voices in both camps do agree, and when that happens I think their conclusions should be given a strong presumption of truth.
They don't believe that miracles happen or they don't accept miracles unless there is sufficient evidence? A subtle but not unimportant distinction.
As to predicting miracles, if anyone could ever do it, seems to me it would be easy enough to do in ways that could be easily confirmed. (In fact, it would be odd to be so talented in one way and then so lacking in a far easier skill--and being intentionally unclear about something so important that you need to tell everyone just makes you a jerk.) So when predictions use vague language or mystical imagery, unclear enough that any generation can claim it's finally come (or is coming) true, so opaque that like-minded groups are capable of forcing it onto their existing reality, then one should be highly suspicious that it can ever be confirmed.
That's me. I don't accept miracles unless there is sufficient evidence.
So far I'm up to zero.
SWMBCg, etc.
Crap. Forgot one. ColumbusGal.
If that's not a miracle, nothing is.
SWMBCg, etc.
I wasn't making a general statement about the criteria by which secularists, agnostics, atheists, and/or Deists evaluate miracles and miraculous future predictions. That's an interesting debate, albeit one we have had in the past if I recall correctly.
I was referring specifically to the fact that secular historians, when writing about religious history and Scriptural exegesis, do in fact treat miracles and miraculous predictions as "off the table". For an example, read anything written about the dating of the Synoptic gospels or Daniel by a secular scholar or by a Jewish or Christian scholar who plays by the same rules as the secularists. The primary technique they use in dating them is that if Jesus is quoted as predicting the destruction of the Temple, then the book must be written after that event -- and then the analysis becomes more complicated by the fact that the Markan prediction is so vague that some argue it could have been pre-70 CE and the Lukan and Matthean details added after that date. Similarly, Daniel must have been written after the events he supposedly predicts in that book.
In neither case am I aware of any scholar who has begun by evaluating whether the evidence of a miraculous prediction meets a specific bar or standard of evidence. And it's hard to imagine how that could be done, given that there are ZERO records of these predictions except in the specific books themselves.
As an example of a religious scholar who plays this same game, see the bestselling books by John P. Meier, one of the best selling and most academically respected Catholic Biblical scholars alive today. He explains his technique in his introduction to his first volume: "In what follows I will try my best to bracket what I hold by faith and examine only what can be shown to be certain or probable by historical research and logical argumentation. I hope non-Catholic scholars in particular will point out where I may fail to observe my own rules by reading Catholic theology into the quest."
A side note to the discussion above, there has been a recent discovery of fragments of the Book of Mark that date to the first century, the earliest such original text from the New Testament yet found. Reportedly, besides its age, the fragment contains no surprises and is pretty much the same text as later versions of Mark, just pushing back the proximity of the book toward the date of the events it describes.
http://freethoughtnation.com/contributing-writers/63-acharya-s/654-1st-century-gospel-of-mark-fragment-discovered.html
I find scholarly study of biblical texts really interesting, irrespective of any analysis of faith. I just read about the book of Matthew, for which there is strong evidence that it was originally written in Hebrew, even though there are no copies of this original. Apparently, because the Hebrew volume included the written name of God, there was great debate over its blasphemy, and many called for all copies to be destroyed (which may have happened). We have records of the debate, but must simply trust that the Greek and Aramaic translations were faithful to some original text lost forever.
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