(no subject)
Sep. 3rd, 2008 12:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avevale_intelligencerLast night we watched yet another in the endless succession of documentary programmes which purport to "prove" that Christianity was founded on a falsehood. Of course, the programme makers themselves would rather appear on camera in person doing the can-can in the nude than do any such thing, but dancing around the idea for an hour is sufficiently sensational to keep people watching between the ad breaks, which is as far as most telly producers' ambitions seem to stretch these days.
I was particularly impressed by the way the scientists involved relied on the testimony of the Bible (that Jesus had four brothers) in order to discredit the testimony of the Bible (that he rose from the dead). One would of course expect that kind of doublethink, when the people who will regard the average man as a credulous hallucinating fool when he claims to have seen a UFO, or to believe in God, will take him for a sensible intelligent fellow when he goes into a witness box, or a jury box, to try a human being for murder. Similarly, it was stated that the Catholic Church denies the existence of the said four brothers as given in the Bible (which is of course a flat lie) in order to promote their idea of Mary as the Virgin Mother of God, which comes from, er, the Bible. It betrays a sort of frantic confusion when the same people who excoriate religious people for taking every word of the Bible literally also charge them with not taking every word of it literally.
The actual evidence, such as it is, consists of a number of bone boxes or ossuaries, on which someone has scribbled, rather in the manner of a schoolboy of old carving his name into his desk with the point of a pair of compasses, some fairly common names of the time such as Yeshua, Mariam, and Yose. I don't know (they didn't say) if any other ossuaries have been found that were carved in this distinctive manner; I would myself expect either something more competently done, or nothing at all. It looks more like the kind of thing someone might do in modern times, who had formed the idea that people were primitive back then and didn't know about straight lines or making your letters the same size...but I wouldn't know.
The simple fact is that there is no conclusive way these bone boxes can be substantively connected with anyone mentioned in the Bible (one of the actual scientists consulted had to point out, rather wearily, that just because two people's DNA proved they were not related did not actually prove that they were married) and the whole thing is a nonsense whipped up out of nothing at all for reasons at which I can only guess, and used by the production company to fill a blank hour on a dull Tuesday night.
The only reason I mention it is as yet another example of the kind of attack on religion which causes me to despair of the human capacity for rational thought. Like the person else-LJ who stated categorically that physical processes work perfectly well without "faith" and "belief" and then turned round (as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
eoforyth would say) and said that if "faith" and "belief" worked chi would have won the Lottery on Friday. What kind of process is supposed to govern the workings of the Lottery, if not the purely physical kind, is beyond the humble scope of this Nyrond's brain.
Attacking reason, as Father Brown said, is bad theology. It also seems that attacking theology is often inseparable from bad reason.
I was particularly impressed by the way the scientists involved relied on the testimony of the Bible (that Jesus had four brothers) in order to discredit the testimony of the Bible (that he rose from the dead). One would of course expect that kind of doublethink, when the people who will regard the average man as a credulous hallucinating fool when he claims to have seen a UFO, or to believe in God, will take him for a sensible intelligent fellow when he goes into a witness box, or a jury box, to try a human being for murder. Similarly, it was stated that the Catholic Church denies the existence of the said four brothers as given in the Bible (which is of course a flat lie) in order to promote their idea of Mary as the Virgin Mother of God, which comes from, er, the Bible. It betrays a sort of frantic confusion when the same people who excoriate religious people for taking every word of the Bible literally also charge them with not taking every word of it literally.
The actual evidence, such as it is, consists of a number of bone boxes or ossuaries, on which someone has scribbled, rather in the manner of a schoolboy of old carving his name into his desk with the point of a pair of compasses, some fairly common names of the time such as Yeshua, Mariam, and Yose. I don't know (they didn't say) if any other ossuaries have been found that were carved in this distinctive manner; I would myself expect either something more competently done, or nothing at all. It looks more like the kind of thing someone might do in modern times, who had formed the idea that people were primitive back then and didn't know about straight lines or making your letters the same size...but I wouldn't know.
The simple fact is that there is no conclusive way these bone boxes can be substantively connected with anyone mentioned in the Bible (one of the actual scientists consulted had to point out, rather wearily, that just because two people's DNA proved they were not related did not actually prove that they were married) and the whole thing is a nonsense whipped up out of nothing at all for reasons at which I can only guess, and used by the production company to fill a blank hour on a dull Tuesday night.
The only reason I mention it is as yet another example of the kind of attack on religion which causes me to despair of the human capacity for rational thought. Like the person else-LJ who stated categorically that physical processes work perfectly well without "faith" and "belief" and then turned round (as
eoforyth would say) and said that if "faith" and "belief" worked chi would have won the Lottery on Friday. What kind of process is supposed to govern the workings of the Lottery, if not the purely physical kind, is beyond the humble scope of this Nyrond's brain.Attacking reason, as Father Brown said, is bad theology. It also seems that attacking theology is often inseparable from bad reason.
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no subject
Date: 2008-09-03 08:10 am (UTC)Irreverent comment
Date: 2008-09-03 08:10 am (UTC)I don't play it -- but I wouldn't mind winning.
So if anyone has winnings that they want rid of, I'm willing to pretend.
Can I hav yr stuf ?
Re: Irreverent comment
Date: 2008-09-03 09:15 am (UTC)But I wouldn't hold my breath.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-03 08:30 am (UTC)When I was at University, I took a class which delved into question of whether non-Biblical sources existed which had something to say about Jesus, and there were three as I recall. One was a line item in a report from Pilate to Rome, one was from Herod's court records, and the third was from Josephus or someone like him which I remember striking me as second or third hand. There were also various Greek documents about St. Paul, but of course they didn't contain any first hand info on Jesus.
The conclusion of the professor was that Jesus existed, but there's not much else we can say about him. The professor didn't trust the gospels, since they were written decades after the crucifixion, by four men with their own agendas. He was especially down on John, who apparently wrote his 60 years later while living in Rome. I may be mis-remembering that bit, it was 40 years ago and I was never good at taking notes.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-03 09:10 am (UTC)Of course, all historical documents are written by people with their own agendas, and most biographies or autobiographies are written towards or after the end of the life they chronicle (or used to be, till celebrities started putting out an autobiography every other year to remind people they still exist) so I suppose it would depend on how good the Gospel writers were at taking notes.
I don't throw things at the telly (it's quite a big one for the benefit of the Countess's eyesight, and I couldn't afford to replace it) but there was some snarling, muttering and shouting from both of us.
EDIT: looks as if the line item in Pilate's report will come up in next week's effort.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-03 08:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-03 11:16 am (UTC)Ah, okay, it's only me Estuarine English being dragged up :)
(I'm one of the wrecks Marion saw dragged up from the Thames)
no subject
Date: 2008-09-04 08:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-03 03:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-03 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-04 07:22 am (UTC)I wonder if they have programmes in India debating the factual accuracy of the Mahabharata and so on?
no subject
Date: 2008-09-04 11:06 am (UTC)Have you ever read As a Driven Leaf by Milton Steinberg? The main plot is that of a Jewish rabbi (one of the rich ones, as opposed to a carpenter like R. Jeshua ben Joseph or a woodcutter like R. Akiba) trying to find himself in a post-Jesus, post-Temple Roman Judea. That in itself is interesting, but it's also a clear and interesting picture of said Judea.