The House of David

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Commentary on Philippians

I've been asked to provide my thoughts on the Book of Philippians. I haven't studied this book to the extent that I've studied the Johannine writings, or for that matter the Jewish-Christian writings of Mark, Matthew, and James. Even when I was a practicing Christian I didn't give this as much thought as I gave to Galatians. I find it hard even to remember whether it's the L or the P that needs to be doubled when I spell "Philippians". So I hope I can do this justice.

Everyone agrees that Philippians is real. That is, it is what it claims to be: a letter from Saint Paul to the Christian community at Philippi in Macedonia. I suspect that Paul wrote this after Galatians and before Romans, but I'm not the one to prove it.

Paul mentions his personal circumstances in this letter, unlike (say) Galatians and the various Corinthian letters: he was "in chains" (1:13,17), probably in the literal sense of a Roman jail (4:22 - Luke's Acts 28:16-31 tells that Paul was in a jail in Rome itself, which is possible, but this is not necessarily the jail to which Philippians refers). Paul's opponents in Christianity, mostly Jewish-Christian, were using this opportunity to speak against him.

Paul here quotes a Christian hymn at Phil 2:6-11, the oldest written attribution of all Christian literature. At this time (55-65 AD?), the sayings and biography of Jesus were still wandering the wilderness of oral tradition. Even Paul didn't quote from that tradition much. So it is impressive that Paul quotes this hymn.

Less impressive is that later Christians took it upon themselves to try to change this hymn. The hymn claims that Jesus was given "the name that is above every name". The Alexandrian Church-fathers Clement and Origen (mid 200s AD), and some variant texts, claimed that this should read that Jesus was given only "a name" - not the Name of the Father. (Ehrman, Orthodox Corruption, p. 268.) Fortunately this seems to be the only word in this book which people tried to change, those people didn't succeed at it, that part of the letter wasn't by Paul in the first place, and Paul doesn't try to derive a theology from it.

Philippians wasn't about deriving a theology anyway. It is more of a pep talk. Paul will however derive the same theology from other sources in other letters, notably Galatians and Romans.

Paul does propose, or re-propose, a soteriology; and this he does derive from the Phil 2:6-11 hymn. A "soteriology" is a salvation theory: in this case, that one is saved (from Hell) by "Christ's crucifixion and resurrection". See also Philippians 1:11; 3:3,9-11 - and, by way of contrast with his Jewish-Christian opponents who (like Muslims today) opposed the Cross, 3:2-3,7-11,18-19. (Ronald F Heck, HarperCollins Study Bible, p. 2203.) As ever with Paul, not being 100% for the Cross meant being a slave of this world and of this (Jewish) law.

Paul liked to talk soteriology, but ended up having to talk theology too as his converts kept getting confused.

The hymn sees Christ as one who started out in the form of God but became humble so that he could be exalted again. For Paul, this hymn has shown the way of salvation to the Christians: who are also an elect of God who must behave humbly so they can be exalted again. Paul himself was once a proud Jew but now has decided that this was all "crap" (3:8).

This book could be read as an counterattack on the opponents of Paul's Crucified Christ school: today these would include Muslims, obviously, but also those who don't think the Crucifixion was important - like Mormons and liberal Christians. Or, it could be read as a plea against pride from someone who used to be full of pride himself.

posted by Zimri on 17:46 | link |

Sunday, April 09, 2006

A world of the blind

MANY years ago, I wrote up a page detailing what I thought should be the standard tools for anyone serious about being published in New Testament biblical criticism. I gave it the grandiose title, Hacking the Bible.

The one language you had to know was Greek (obviously). But the second most important language was "Coptic" - the last form of Egyptian, written in a Greek-derivative script. Without Coptic, you can't read the Gospel of the Saviour, the Gospel of Judas, the Secret Book of James, the Gospel of Mary or even most of the Gospel of Thomas. Plus, you'd think that Coptic scholars could at least moonlight as Aegyptologists and keep us Bronze Age fans happy.

Ben Witherington tells us that a grand total of five scholars - and probably less - are versed enough in Coptic to be trusted with a translation.

If true - and I suspect it is - this should be a scandal throughout all Christendom.

posted by Zimri on 00:19 | link |

Saturday, April 08, 2006

The latest Coptic gospel... snore

So, after years of waiting for the Gospel of Judas to come out, finally it's the night before Palm Sunday. Coincidentally, this day is also the day for which Morton Smith used to claim that the Gospel of Mark deliberately omitted a section.

We should call this the real Christian "day of fools".

I have, at last, read the thing. I then read the commentaries in The Gospel of Judas's translation. I even leafed through the boring book on the topic by Herbert Krosney. Rarely have I seen so much hype about so insignificant a find. The promotion of The Gospel of the Saviour was nothing like this.

Glenn Reynolds has linked to Dave Kopel. Kopel admittedly doesn't help his case against Gnostic forgeries when he cites the Pastoral Epistles, forgeries so famous in their own right that the third of Kopel's 100-odd commenters thus far has already pointed this out. But otherwise Kopel is right.

Gospel of Judas is useful only as a window on second century AD Gnosticism. Even one of the essays in the published translation admits that this "gospel" is secondary to the Book of Acts. I could add that the text planted its "secret" material into Jesus's earthly life like the Gospel of the Saviour, rather than into a post-resurrection visionary appearance like the Secret Book of James. In this the gospel pays homage to the canon which we already have, much as did The Epistle of Peter to Philip - with which, interestingly, the Gospel of Judas shares a codex.

The new gospel further takes on some Johannine aspects, in that Jesus's primary importance is whence he came and whither he is going. I suppose I could buy the book and write an essay on it, but quite frankly the prospect doesn't engage me. I've seen too much of this genre already to get all excited.

(And I'll be interested to see the New Age neo-Gnostics' reaction to this book. Gospel of Judas lobs at least two unflattering references to male homosexuals that I could count. My thinking is: they'll pick it up, cuddle it, call it mon cheri - and drop it faster than a cartoon cat can drop Pepe Le Pew.)

It is a very, very secondary work; and those associated with it are creating a lot of noise over nothing. I'm getting more and more tempted to convert to Catholicism just to piss these guys off.

Wake me when they find the rest of the Egerton Gospel or else a variant Gospel of Mark. Til then, please don't waste my time. In the words of Reginold - GosJud hypers, YAAFM! Thank you, thank you.

posted by Zimri on 22:50 | link |

Burned bridges of Montgomery County

The school system of Montgomery County in Maryland has chosen to send its students out to anti-American demonstrations, for classroom credit. Tip o' the hat to Michelle Malkin, who calls it "Reason number 112,765 to homeschool". I must further note that this is not the first time the county has behaved in this way; although back then Prince George's County got into the act too.

I would, instead, label this a reason for the federal government to take away Maryland's rights over Montgomery County's schools, and to run it as part of the District of Columbia.

As I see this, Montgomery County has seceded from the Constitutional structure of this nation. Since its residents have chosen to elect anti-American representatives, the rest of America has no moral obligation to afford it the rights inherent in citizenship.

(Other posts on Maryland's general unfitness for statehood here and here.)

posted by Zimri on 17:15 | link |

Workout update

It's been over a month, so I think I can deliver a status on what I can "bench" without eliciting too many gales of laughter.

Vital stats first: I still weigh between 150-155 pounds. I'd say what it was in kilos, but I don't care; or else in "stone", but I'm not British anymore and I never bothered with that unit of measurement even when I was. Put me down as "average" or "target" weight. I am used to weighing less; for instance, I was in the 145 pound region last year and the year before that, and for that matter back to 1996 at any moment in which I'd had to report what it was. Over the last year I've had to buy a new belt and I currently need my wristwatch resized.

My membership has been with Bally's since 25 June 1995 - and I was 150+ lb then, too. Ideally I attend the place every other day, but if I'm bored and the traffic isn't so bad - usually on the weekends - I'll go the next day too. I generally do a "hill" routine on the digital exercise bike, and I do that for 15 minutes. Then I go for the weights; generally two but sometimes three bouts of ten repeated grunts on each. Sometimes I wait for about a minute between sessions; sometimes I just walk around and get a sip of water; sometimes I go try something else and then go back to it later.

The weights used to include some of an electronic version which automatically calculated your abilities; but those were all removed, likely for legal reasons, sometime in the late 1990s. Back when there were electronics, I used these as staple exercises: four torso exercises (vertical pull & push, chest pull & push), bicep, tricep, and an abdominal crunch. I started out doing the leg and back exercises, too, but then I decided that the bike was doing for my legs just fine and that my back could look after itself. When they took away the electronics, I also quit with the biceps and triceps, which also take care of themselves when I'm working out with other machines - particularly the chest and vertical pull weights. I do however sometimes walk around while pulling up 10 lb dumbbells, for muscle tone and for relief of boredom if nothing else.

I was gung-ho about the gym thing in summer to fall '95. At my peak I remember cresting 100 lb on the chest push and chest pull, and I was nearly able to do a full set of pull-ups.

But I was still at school in 1995, for my senior year; and I got into one of my dark moods, and fell off the gym version of The Wagon. Since then my trips to the gym have been sporadic to nonexistent. It is hard to stay motivated. Plus I started contracting vicious skin infections on my back and / or shoulder(s) whenever I went. This is why I've posted so little on the topic in my blog.

This actually happened this time around too - a few weeks ago on my back - but I gave my immune system the opportunity to beat it out of my system. Which it did. Booya! I'm probably not going to have any worries on that score until November or so. As for motivation, I now have an iPod and the iPod has a ton of music - almost literally when measured in CDs - so I'm not bored anymore.

Today on the bike I rode through level 7. I can pull over 90 lb on the seated row and, with more effort, 105 lb on the lat pulldown. This is about where I was in early August 1995, which means that this current bout of exercise is about as serious as it's ever been.

The other systems are harder to pin down. The chest push machines are radically different depending on which gym I attend; I can push around 80 at the gym by my house, but barely 50 lb in the gym downtown (now that they removed the electronics). Same with the ab crunch: I'm either at 90 lb or 70 lb (this is particularly hard to test because other people keep hogging that particular machine). The vertical shoulder push is something I've always questioned whether I should even bother doing; I'm at the not-quite-40 lb there. There's some kind of arm-squeeze machine which never had an electronic counterpart, and I do 60 lb on that one easily; but it's hard to justify doing it because it was never in my routine when there were electronics to guide me. It's easier to justify the side-bending machine, because I always thought there should be more focus on abdominals: I'm at 80 lb on that one.

My worry is that where I've failed in the past was where I tried to do more weight than I could handle, and got disgruntled. Mind you, my metabolism burned a LOT hotter then than it does now, so I ran low on reserves. That's not so much the case nowadays; nowadays the issue is whether I can convert the reserves into useable energy. When I reach my limit again I wonder if a personal trainer might not be in the works.

I figure I've bored you enough - for now. Bu hahaha! I'll deliver another status report in a few weeks.

posted by Zimri on 15:14 | link |

Endorsement: Mike Schofield

There's a Republican primary runoff at 11 April, between Jim Murphy and Mike Schofield. It's over my own li'l district seat, vacated by Joe Nixon (I voted for him in the Senate race; he was the anti-gambling candidate). I know this because the two have been flooding my mailbox with junk. Spam spam spam spam spam...

Murphy wants us to know that he's a local boy; and apparently the local GOP (and Nixon) prefer him as well. Schofield moved to Austin to work with Texas Governor, Rick Perry; and now he's came back. As the Chronicle has mentioned, they're running on similar platforms. Hence the spam; and I suppose I now have to choose based on the spams' quality. Hormel or generic? Yummy.

The lowest ad I've yet seen was Murphy's. Murphy ran an ad juxtaposing Schofield with Hillary! Clinton, calling him a likewise carpetbagger without actually using the word. To paraphrase that ad, Murphy's not fooling anyone. First off, it's a lie. Second, the ad would seem to imply that Murphy does not want women, Negroes, or anyone not born to this district to vote for him. As a born Servant of Her Majesty, since relocated and repatriated, I don't appreciate this.

Apparently Murphy is keen to switch job titles so that he can keep his old taxpayer-funded career while he represents us. Well, not exactly "us", "us". While at Houston Community College, he'd also rescinded his promise to boost our homestead exemptions. So yeah, Murphy technically has stayed within our district, but he hasn't done a whit of good for the taxpayers in it.

Anyway. I'll be more than happy to help Schofield in his quest to remove Murphy's RINO horn from our sides.

(Murphy's campaign has not, as yet, reached the cynicism of the Orlando Sanchez campaign against Bill White a few years back, where the mantra was "vote for Turner!" in an attempt to generate a Sanchez-vs-PostLeeBrownBlackDemocrat runoff. Now THAT was a disgrace. To be fair, both Sanchito and Turner turned out to be right that Bill White was not fit for the job. Sanchez-Turner for Mayor 2007?)

posted by Zimri on 14:51 | link |

Taught by the controversy

I've noticed that Outsider Pre-Human Intelligent Design advocates - "OPHIDians" for short - have slithered back into the primordial ooze whence the Scientific Creationists had gone before them. For example, where Senator Santorum was demanding that it receive a hearing back in 2002, in 2005 he was claiming that he never had any relations with that hypothesis.

There was a court case in Dover, PA, that had ruled against the Ophidians. At the time I thought this case was one of those win-a-few, lose-a-few cases which could be appealed further up the line. However it appears that the bulk of the legal community and also of the religious community has read that opinion and agreed with it. So have the cynics; for instance, Scott Adams. And of course all the scientists who are both ethical and serious about the subject had long been pushing for evolution; ever since the acceptance of DNA code and plate tectonics in the 1960s, no scientist has had any excuse for agnosticism about the evolutionist framework.

Now that the debate is done as a political matter, the tar-n-feathers game may begin. Since it was Republicans who were disproportionately the anti-scientific party here - counting Santorum, Bush, and especially DeLay among their ranks - the Democrats can use this to find other pet causes in which they can cast Republicans as anti-science. Resistance to the biological singularity is an example, specifically of the hampering of scientific progress; but only extreme blogospheric nerds care about this so far.

People do seem to care about the breach of scientific ethics. One such is the claim that one must "teach the controversy" to the next generation in cases where there is no real controversy in the current generation. Intelligent Design was an example of a "controversy" which was controversial only among partisans, and among no scientists. Now that this has been exposed as a fraud, any other issue touching on real science in which Republicans complain that there is a controversy is now (as above) derided by the same means. I've seen in Tom Tomorrow and Doonesbury cartoons thus far, that we must treat wingnuts' worries about the nature, extent, and effects of global warming as equivalent to their previous cavils against evolution.

I must say that the Republicans should be ashamed for playing footsie with these despicable New World talibûna for so long. In particular: for a long while it was difficult for a humanist to agree to pull the lever for more conservative federal judges, when it was the conservative state legislatures which forced so much of the scientific agenda into the court system. Santorum seems to have recanted his idiocy, and we're soon to be rid of DeLay; but this is very late in the game.

posted by Zimri on 14:14 | link |

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Jill Carroll

Jill Carroll was taken hostage in Iraq, and subsequently appeared in propaganda videos on her kidnappers' behalf. Now that she has been rescued, she tells she was forced to do it.

First, I am very happy she is safe and sound from those murderers. Second, this goes to show the nature of the evil against which we fight; that the murderers are, in fact, murderers.

I also hope those bloggers who were calling her a moonbat or, worse, saying "Stockholm Syndrome" - code for "she enjoyed being kidnapped and forced to dance for them!" - will recant and apologise for their sickening actions.

posted by Zimri on 16:41 | link |

Free Inquiry is good for Muslims

Now, when I am in a Border's or a Barnes & Noble, and I see a woman in a headscarf or a man with a mid-length beard, I have to think to myself: why is s/he here?

Is he here to buy a book, or is he there to ensure that I can't buy a book?

It seems to me that if Muslims care about their opinion in the eyes of your average Joe, then they should prove the naysayers wrong. Like, by standing up for the bookseller's right to publish anything it pleases. Instead of bombing shit and making threats.

posted by Zimri on 16:01 | link |

Wahhabi booksellers, without the honesty

I use Borders and Barnes & Nobles as places to browse. Often, I browse in the religion section and sometimes, in the Islam section. This section, on occasion, stocks books skeptical of the radical Muslims' claims. Although it took the chains about a year I was eventually able to get my hands on a copy of What the Koran Really Says.

That is - it used to stock such books.

The Borders on the I-610 has lately tended to scatter the Islam-skeptic books across its other shelves; it leaves the Islamic-friendly section bunched together as "Islam". The casual reader isn't going to get the opposite side of the tale. And, famously, Waldenbooks took about a year before they dared show The Satanic Verses in public.

Leave aside the obvious message this sends to other terrorists. Sounds to me like someone could go spray the Koran shelf with lighter fluid and get that book off the shelves. The "Current Events" and "Social Sciences" shelves typically have stuff to which people object; they gotta go too. "Science"? Can't have any books about evolution without contrary views - *foom*. Role-playing games: now THERE's a game of Shaytan. Burn, baby, burn! But others have already made these points, and more eloquently.

My point is this: Border's is no longer a useful store for anyone who just wants to browse around.

Now that Border's has taken up paying Saracengeld again, how useful will it be to browse there again? I can't expect they'll ever show a book offensive to Islamists again. I'm glad I bought Robert Ferrigno's book back in January, for instance. All I'll be able to expect from here on is fluff from Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, if not outright Taliban apologetic from Yahya Emerick.

I may as well go to Dar as-Salaam and pick up a tract from them; at least they are honest about their Wahhabism. Or maybe I could go to a Christian bookseller.

posted by Zimri on 15:47 | link |

Halal books, haram books

I waited a bit before I commented on the bookstore chains' refusal to stock the skeptic's magazine, Free Inquiry. It would appear that a few nights of Muslim rioting have done what decades of Christian protest could not do.

I went to the Barnes & Noble instead and asked for the magazine. (No, it was not in response to the Lizardoids' crusade; I honestly wanted to see what the fuss was about.) The checkout clerks had heard of the issue, and claimed that they stocked it at other stores, but just not at that particular store. Shyeah.

Certainly there is a case to be made for sympathy for the devil's slaves, if not for the actual devil. Gerard Van der Leun has stood up for the bookstore chains' stance, against the heckling of other bloggers. It's an astonishingly believable satire; and if the CEO had said it, it would have shamed the bloggers into silence, I'm sure.

So. Will Border's or Barnes & Noble ever dare run a "Banned Books Week" again?

posted by Zimri on 15:37 | link |

Fools in April

I saw a bumper sticker today: "National Atheists Day / APRIL 1ST / 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God' (Ps. 14:1)".

In the Hebrew, the word for "God" which the Bible uses is "Elohim", a plural form which strictly means the whole assembly of Canaanite gods. But the Biblical context is a Psalm of David, in the name of YHWH; and the psalm does not attack folly nor even philosophical atheism, but corruption. It is likely that the psalm was citing a Canaanite proverb.

The proverb itself is ambiguously worded, but I sympathise with what it was trying to say. The wise man who thought it up meant to point out that there are consequences for one's actions, and that only a fool should disregard this. "Elohim" in this context is meant to be an anthropomorphism, or rather daemonomorphism, akin to my military-policeman grandfather's saying "man unloads the gun and then the Devil loads it". It was not meant as a demand to worship the Canaanite gods. The proverb's author assumed that the people paid at least lip service to the gods of their fathers.

The bumper sticker misunderstood this, and compounded it by claiming that disbelief should be a national scandal rather than one person's error.

The slavemaster says in his heart, "One Nation... Under Me".

I'd say more, but there are some priestesses that I need to despoil at the local Temple of Astarte, and I'd be a fool to keep them waiting...

posted by Zimri on 13:59 | link |