Around 1000 B.C.E., a king named David came to the throne of Israel, inheriting a kingdom that had been united by his predecessor from the lands conquered by the Jews of the exodus era. He moved his capital from the Judean town of Hebron to the nearby city of Jerusalem, which he conquered from a Canaanite tribe called the Jebusites. Prior to this time, Jerusalem had been the untouchable pearl of the area, perched unassailably atop a hillside, where it easily gained notoriety as a heavenly city, built literally (as far as the ancient Jews were concerned) right beneath the base of heaven.
One can almost imagine the early Jews looking toward Jerusalem from their capital city of Hebron and marveling at its glory, up there on the hillside, illuminated each evening by the long rays of the setting sun. It is little wonder that they wanted it for themselves. King David helped them achieve this goal, and Jerusalem has been at the center of Jewish culture ever since. Its location and mythological aura helped create such New Testament images as the “New Jerusalem” which would “descend from heaven” at the second coming. Jerusalem had been overrun and largely destroyed around 70 C.E., and the writer of Revelation envisioned Jesus returning in glory to earth to re-establish Jerusalem as the city of God.
After King David came to the throne, the kingdom of Israel flourished for another 70 years or so, through the reign of his son Solomon, until geographic differences caused a split which resulted in the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. Over the next several hundred years, Judah – with its capital city of Jerusalem – flourished while its northern neighbor struggled and eventually declined. The kingdom of Israel was overrun and ultimately destroyed around 720 B.C.E. by the Assyrians. Judah, however, continued on until roughly 590 B.C.E., when it was overrun in a series of attacks by the Babylonians. The Judeans were deported and sent into exile in Babylon while their kingdom and their capital city of Jerusalem sat in ruins, overrun by foreigners.
The Jews remained in exile for roughly 40-50 years, or two generations. During that time, the first nuggets of the messiah tradition began to develop. The Jews envisioned a son of God arising from the Jewish ranks to return the Jews to Davidic glory. To the ancient Jew, “son of God” did not mean someone who was literally the divine offspring of God. Rather, it was a term used to describe the king of Judah or Israel, that is, God’s “chosen” or “anointed” leader on earth. Many ancient cultures referred to their king as “God’s son.” Thus, the messiah tradition began as one of a mighty, conquering king. Included in this tradition was the idea that this king would be “of the line of David,” as David was the legendary king who had led the united Israel through its golden age.
Around 535 B.C.E., the Persian king Cyrus finally allowed the Jews to return to their homeland. By now, most all the people of the original exile were dead, so those returning were children of the exile, knowing their homeland only through stories and oral traditions.
Unfortunately, when they began arriving back home en masse, they discovered to their horror that the celebrated homeland they had heard about from their parents and grandparents while sitting around the campfires of Babylon was nothing but a toppled, deserted wasteland. Their cities were crumbling and the desert was taking back over. Foreigners occupied their houses and properties, worshipping foreign gods under foreign religious traditions. Hardly the glorious return they had expected and hoped for.
At this point, the messiah traditions began transforming from ideas of a great and powerful king to ideas of a “suffering servant,” a prophet who would raise Israel to newness of life in God. It became a “spiritual” idea rather than a physical one, as there seemed to be no hope for any physical return to glory for Israel.
Into this mindset came an unnamed and unknown prophet whose writings eventually came to be tagged on to the end of the Isaiah scrolls. From Isaiah chapter 40 and onward, a different writer is writing, and this writer’s works (chapter 40 through the end of the book of Isaiah) are known in scholarly circles as “2 Isaiah.” It is within these chapters that the “suffering servant” version of the messianic tradition is described. These are the passages most often quoted in the New Testament, and by modern Christians, when referring to Old Testament prophecies about the messiah. This model stated that the messiah would be a prophet and servant who would suffer for mankind and who, because he was so utterly pure, would take on the sins of the Jewish nation in order to bring about the kingdom of God.
Within a generation or two of the writing of 2 Isaiah, the older versions of messianic traditions began cropping up again. Israelite lands were being rebuilt and reclaimed, and the Jewish nation was slowly but surely returning to glory. The “suffering servant” of 2 Isaiah was more or less forgotten in favor of the older “conquering king” models. The models began taking on an increasingly mythological and fanciful quality, as the Jews began to hope for a king who would ultimately raise the Jewish nation into oneness with God and ultimate control of their lands. This became especially important once the Jewish nation came under the sphere of Roman influence.
Into this Jewish culture came Jesus of Nazareth, an alternate wisdom teacher and faith healer who called his followers into newness of life in God, and presented a major threat to the Jewish power base in Roman-controlled Jerusalem. After Jesus was executed, and his followers were attempting to understand his life against the backdrop of their Jewish heritage and culture, someone, or some group of people, began to see parallels between Jesus’s life and the obscure “suffering servant” messiah talked about in the final chapters of the book of Isaiah.
The mythologies and prophetic connections, including the idea that Jesus was “of the line of David,” began building from there within the mindset of the early Christian community. By the time of the Gospels and most of the other New Testament books, Israel was once again defeated and the Jews dispersed, and this time, there was no going back. No chance of ever returning to glory. This only helped to fuel the belief by many converts that Jesus was the messiah, and that the messiah was not a conquering king, but one who would suffer to bring spiritual glory instead.
The Gospels, of course, tell us that Jesus was recognized during his life as this long-awaited messiah. An early passage in Mark’s account has Jesus ask his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter responds “You are the Christ [that is, the Messiah].” However, it seems absurd to suggest that Peter actually said this, especially so early in Jesus’s ministry. If Peter and the others had recognized messianic prophecies in Jesus so early on, their behavior as described in the Gospels later makes no sense. Their later misunderstandings, denials, and abandonments are nonsensical if they had understood all along that he was the suffering servant messiah, and, as such, must therefore suffer for the glory of humanity. If they had understood this idea during Jesus’s life, they would not have been such bumbling idiots later.
For me, it seems clear that the messianic models were not applied to Jesus until after his death, and after the spiritual awakening that defined the resurrection experience for his followers.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Easter Week Day 2 - The Burial of Jesus
Christian Easter traditions state that, after Jesus was crucified, he was taken down from the cross and buried by a mysterious character named Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph was a wealthy Jewish leader, and, so the story goes, he used his own tomb to bury Jesus’s body, covering the tomb entrance with a large, round stone.
These images are an integral part of the Easter story, and have given rise to our concepts of the “stone” being “rolled away,” the angel perched atop the stone to announce Jesus’s resurrection, and the women “entering the tomb” to anoint Jesus’s body.
A recent scholarly account that I have come across argues that Joseph of Arimathea is a fictional character (which I believe is probably true), and that, in fact, Jesus was probably not buried in a tomb at all.
This argument is based on several intriguing textual clues, as well as the custom of the times. In ancient Rome, when criminals were crucified, their bodies were taken down by the soldiers and buried in common, mass graves. The only reason Christian tradition holds that this was not true for Jesus is because of the Joseph of Arimathea story (which the Gospel of John adds to by including another Jewish leader and secret follower of Jesus, a man named Nicodemus, who appears several times in John’s account). If evidence exists to suggest that the Joseph of Arimathea tradition is fictional, then the only assumption that can be made is that Jesus was buried by the soldiers in a mass grave. Thus, we turn to the texts.
The first clue involves the reason for the visit to the tomb by the women. In this tradition, the women come on the morning after the Sabbath to “anoint” Jesus’s body. This seems a strange thing for them to do, considering that all the Gospel accounts of Joseph of Arimathea state that Joseph anointed Jesus’s body and prepared it for burial. There would be no reason for the women to go two days later to anoint Jesus’s body again. In fact, for an ancient Jew, to mess with a dead body that had already been prepared adequately and buried would have been a desecration. This suggests, perhaps, that there are echoes of earlier traditions in this later Sunday morning tomb story – that is, an early tradition might have stated that female followers of Jesus went to find Jesus’s grave so they could give him a proper Jewish anointing, since he was otherwise buried by non-Jews in a common grave.
The second clue involves the common Gospel theme of how Jesus’s followers abandoned him at the hour of his death. With the exception of John’s Gospel, which states that the “disciple whom Jesus loved” remained by Jesus’s side to the end (a rather transparent attempt by the writer(s) of John to glorify the disciple John, who was the patron of this particular group of Christians), the Gospels tell us that all of Jesus’s followers and disciples scattered at the crucifixion. Jesus was effectively abandoned to the authorities, as his followers attempted to save their own skins. Thus, there was no one around to stop the soldiers from taking Jesus’s body and burying it according to Roman custom.
This is the reason, no doubt, for the genesis of the Joseph of Arimathea story – since it was widely known that Jesus’s followers had abandoned him at the end, Jesus’s biographers had to come up with some way of getting Jesus from a common Roman grave to a tomb that could later be found empty. Thus, Joseph of Arimathea shows up suddenly in Mark’s Gospel to take charge of Jesus’s body.
If this is true, it does not, in my opinion, mean that Mark and the other Gospel writers were making it all up. By the time of Mark’s Gospel, around 70 C.E., the empty tomb tradition was well established in the budding Christian community. Mark simply had to come up with a way to account for the fact that no one had been around to bury Jesus, other than the Roman authorities. So in order to reconcile that problem, it seems likely that he came up with the character of Joseph of Arimathea.
When we look to the earlier New Testament texts, we find no mention of this Joseph, or even of anything like an empty tomb or a rolled away stone. Paul, the earliest New Testament writer, says only that Jesus “was buried.” There is no elaboration at all – no mention of a “tomb” and no mention of any of the events surrounding the tomb. In fact, outside of the Gospels and Acts, there is no mention of a tomb for Jesus at all in any New Testament writing.
The final textual clue – and perhaps the most compelling – comes to us from the book of Acts. It is found in a sermon attributed to Paul – the same Paul who never, in his own writings, mentioned anything about an empty tomb or a burial by Joseph of Arimathea. The passage, found in Acts 13, states the following: “The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed. When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb.”
Pay special attention to that final sentence. Paul, speaking through the pen of the writer of Acts, states that the Jewish authorities, through Rome, took charge of Jesus’s burial!
The writer of Acts was the same writer who wrote the Gospel of Luke, and that writer’s Gospel, like the others, includes the Joseph of Arimathea tradition. However, it would appear that, in this portion of his second volume, while transcribing a sermon attributed to Paul, Luke fell back into an earlier tradition surrounding Jesus’s burial – one that knew Jesus had been buried by the authorities, not by his own followers.
The clues all add up to indicate that perhaps Jesus was not buried in a tomb at all, but rather in a common Roman grave, with the other criminals (and there may have been many) who were executed with him.
I can’t say, at this point, that I find this argument totally convincing – I think there is probably no way to know for sure. Maybe he was buried in a private tomb and maybe he wasn’t. However, I think the clues and the conclusion are consistent and intriguing, and if nothing else, I think it points strongly to the reality that the stories of Jesus are Jewish midrash, written metaphorically and for the purpose of describing, through the lens of Jewish spiritual tradition, the transcendent God-experience met in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
These images are an integral part of the Easter story, and have given rise to our concepts of the “stone” being “rolled away,” the angel perched atop the stone to announce Jesus’s resurrection, and the women “entering the tomb” to anoint Jesus’s body.
A recent scholarly account that I have come across argues that Joseph of Arimathea is a fictional character (which I believe is probably true), and that, in fact, Jesus was probably not buried in a tomb at all.
This argument is based on several intriguing textual clues, as well as the custom of the times. In ancient Rome, when criminals were crucified, their bodies were taken down by the soldiers and buried in common, mass graves. The only reason Christian tradition holds that this was not true for Jesus is because of the Joseph of Arimathea story (which the Gospel of John adds to by including another Jewish leader and secret follower of Jesus, a man named Nicodemus, who appears several times in John’s account). If evidence exists to suggest that the Joseph of Arimathea tradition is fictional, then the only assumption that can be made is that Jesus was buried by the soldiers in a mass grave. Thus, we turn to the texts.
The first clue involves the reason for the visit to the tomb by the women. In this tradition, the women come on the morning after the Sabbath to “anoint” Jesus’s body. This seems a strange thing for them to do, considering that all the Gospel accounts of Joseph of Arimathea state that Joseph anointed Jesus’s body and prepared it for burial. There would be no reason for the women to go two days later to anoint Jesus’s body again. In fact, for an ancient Jew, to mess with a dead body that had already been prepared adequately and buried would have been a desecration. This suggests, perhaps, that there are echoes of earlier traditions in this later Sunday morning tomb story – that is, an early tradition might have stated that female followers of Jesus went to find Jesus’s grave so they could give him a proper Jewish anointing, since he was otherwise buried by non-Jews in a common grave.
The second clue involves the common Gospel theme of how Jesus’s followers abandoned him at the hour of his death. With the exception of John’s Gospel, which states that the “disciple whom Jesus loved” remained by Jesus’s side to the end (a rather transparent attempt by the writer(s) of John to glorify the disciple John, who was the patron of this particular group of Christians), the Gospels tell us that all of Jesus’s followers and disciples scattered at the crucifixion. Jesus was effectively abandoned to the authorities, as his followers attempted to save their own skins. Thus, there was no one around to stop the soldiers from taking Jesus’s body and burying it according to Roman custom.
This is the reason, no doubt, for the genesis of the Joseph of Arimathea story – since it was widely known that Jesus’s followers had abandoned him at the end, Jesus’s biographers had to come up with some way of getting Jesus from a common Roman grave to a tomb that could later be found empty. Thus, Joseph of Arimathea shows up suddenly in Mark’s Gospel to take charge of Jesus’s body.
If this is true, it does not, in my opinion, mean that Mark and the other Gospel writers were making it all up. By the time of Mark’s Gospel, around 70 C.E., the empty tomb tradition was well established in the budding Christian community. Mark simply had to come up with a way to account for the fact that no one had been around to bury Jesus, other than the Roman authorities. So in order to reconcile that problem, it seems likely that he came up with the character of Joseph of Arimathea.
When we look to the earlier New Testament texts, we find no mention of this Joseph, or even of anything like an empty tomb or a rolled away stone. Paul, the earliest New Testament writer, says only that Jesus “was buried.” There is no elaboration at all – no mention of a “tomb” and no mention of any of the events surrounding the tomb. In fact, outside of the Gospels and Acts, there is no mention of a tomb for Jesus at all in any New Testament writing.
The final textual clue – and perhaps the most compelling – comes to us from the book of Acts. It is found in a sermon attributed to Paul – the same Paul who never, in his own writings, mentioned anything about an empty tomb or a burial by Joseph of Arimathea. The passage, found in Acts 13, states the following: “The people of Jerusalem and their rulers did not recognize Jesus, yet in condemning him they fulfilled the words of the prophets that are read every Sabbath. Though they found no proper ground for a death sentence, they asked Pilate to have him executed. When they had carried out all that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb.”
Pay special attention to that final sentence. Paul, speaking through the pen of the writer of Acts, states that the Jewish authorities, through Rome, took charge of Jesus’s burial!
The writer of Acts was the same writer who wrote the Gospel of Luke, and that writer’s Gospel, like the others, includes the Joseph of Arimathea tradition. However, it would appear that, in this portion of his second volume, while transcribing a sermon attributed to Paul, Luke fell back into an earlier tradition surrounding Jesus’s burial – one that knew Jesus had been buried by the authorities, not by his own followers.
The clues all add up to indicate that perhaps Jesus was not buried in a tomb at all, but rather in a common Roman grave, with the other criminals (and there may have been many) who were executed with him.
I can’t say, at this point, that I find this argument totally convincing – I think there is probably no way to know for sure. Maybe he was buried in a private tomb and maybe he wasn’t. However, I think the clues and the conclusion are consistent and intriguing, and if nothing else, I think it points strongly to the reality that the stories of Jesus are Jewish midrash, written metaphorically and for the purpose of describing, through the lens of Jewish spiritual tradition, the transcendent God-experience met in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Easter Week Day 1 - The Tradition of Three Days
Christian tradition states that Jesus was crucified on Friday afternoon, died near sundown, was taken down from the cross and buried, remained dead throughout Saturday, then rose sometime before dawn on Sunday morning (the “first day of the week”).
Bearing this in mind, did Jesus make a mistake in predicting the amount of time before his resurrection? If not, how can the following be explained:
Mark 8:31 – He [Jesus] then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.
Matthew 12:40 – (Jesus speaking) “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
You can do the simple math here. Three days from Friday evening is Monday evening, not Sunday morning. According to tradition as I outlined above, Jesus was dead for about 36 hours – not even two full days. Yet in Mark, and again in Matthew, Jesus predicts he will rise “after three days” and that he will be “three days and three nights” in the heart of the earth.
Those who claim biblical infallibility are faced with a dilemma here. They must either admit that Jesus – the divine Son of God – got his own resurrection prediction wrong, or they must admit that the bible is fallible. It simply can’t be both ways. Either Jesus was dead and buried for a day and a half (as the “first day of the week” resurrection tradition implies), or he was dead and buried for three days and three nights, as an apparently earlier Christian tradition stated.
When you take a deeper look at the Synoptic texts (that is, Matthew, Mark, and Luke), a clear progression of events begins to come to light surrounding the three days/first day of the week dichotomy. (I exclude the Gospel of John from this because John has no references at all to Jesus predicting the progression of days between his crucifixion and his resurrection.)
To start, it is important to understand the background of just what “three days” meant to the average first century Jew. Three days, according to Jewish apocryphal teachings, was the amount of time that would pass after the end of the world before the ushering in of the kingdom of God. Obviously, this is counter-intuitive, as there could be no “days” after the “end of the world.” But that mindbending concept was sort of the point of the mythology – the kingdom of God is bigger than our concept of reality and stands squarely outside of our concept of space and time. Thus, the idea of significant events occurring around a 3-day time frame was common in Jewish scripture. In the Old Testament, there are no less than 70 different references to events occurring either “on the third day” or “after three days” or “within three days,” etc. Like the number 12 and its various multiples, 3 was an important number to the ancient Hebrews, and “three days” was a spiritual concept that was never meant to imply literal chronological time.
When the Gospel writers sat down to write their accounts of Jesus’s life, they had a clear and spiritually-relevant image of the significance of “three days.” As they wrote their accounts, they used this Jewish image midrashically – that is, they incorporated this ancient Jewish apocryphal concept into the story of Jesus of Nazareth as a means of displaying the importance of Jesus’s teachings on their own spiritual awakening.
However, in doing so, they also needed to fix the competing traditions within the Christian community of Jesus being dead “three days” before his resurrection (which appears to be the earlier tradition), and Jesus rising on “the first day of the week” (which appears to have developed sometime later).
Mark, the first gospel writer, writing in about 70 C.E. (that is, about two generations after the death of Jesus), does not appear to have a problem with the conflict. Throughout his Gospel, and on more than one occasion, he has Jesus predict that he will rise from the dead “after three days.” However, during his resurrection account, he goes with the dawn of Sunday morning tradition, stating that the women went “on the first day of the week” to anoint Jesus’s body and subsequently found the tomb empty.
Matthew was the next Gospel to be written, and it was composed about 10-15 years after Mark, around 80 C.E. The defining characteristic of this Gospel is its target audience of Jewish Christians. The Gospel is full of references to Old Testament stories and prophecies, and the purpose of the writer was clearly to persuade those of the Jewish faith and culture that Jesus was the anointed one of God, predicted and expected so frequently in Jewish scripture. Much of Matthew’s text is drawn directly from Mark, and it is almost universally accepted within scholarly and even most theological circles that Matthew used Mark’s Gospel as an outline. Much of Matthew has word-for-word transcriptions of Mark’s story. Interestingly, with the exception of the above-referenced verse wherein Jesus predicts his death to last three days and three nights, Matthew changes all of Mark’s “after three days” comments to “on the third day.”
Thus, you have examples like Matthew 16:21 – From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
As noted above, the one occasion where Matthew does use the “three days” motif is when Matthew is linking Jesus to the Old Testament story of Jonah. Clearly Matthew couldn’t change the established text regarding Jonah, so he stuck with the “three days” motif and had Jesus predict his time “in the heart of the earth” as “three days and three nights.” Again, Matthew’s purpose was to link Jesus to Old Testament prophecies and stories, and here he seems to have had a difficult choice to either connect Jesus to the Old Testament character of Jonah and therefore abide by the “three days” tradition, or throw the Jonah link out completely. He clearly decided it was more important to keep the Jonah link there, since it served his target purpose. Everywhere else, however, he changed “three days” to “on the third day,” obviously trying to account for Mark’s contradiction.
Luke, writing about 90 C.E. and 20 years after Mark, also used Mark as a guide and also carried on Matthew’s tradition of changing all of Mark’s “three days” statements. Whereas Mark has 5 different references to Jesus talking about his resurrection occurring “after three days,” Luke has no references using “three days” at all, and instead has 5 references to “on the third day.”
It seems quite clear that Matthew and Luke, writing later and using Mark as a guide, systematically changed all of Mark’s “three days” references to “on the third day,” since such a phrase could reasonably be construed to imply the first day of the week (that is, Sunday). It was a way for Matthew and Luke to reconcile the competing traditions of Jesus rising on Sunday morning and Jesus being dead for “three days.”
John Shelby Spong argues that the resurrection was a real event involving real experiences with real people, but he believes it was a kind of spiritual awakening, centered around Peter, and occurring after a lengthy passage of time from the date of Jesus’s death. The stories of dead bodies reanimating, empty tombs, a 3-day time frame between death and resurrection, and Jerusalem as the setting for the resurrection, Spong argues, are simply midrashic techniques and mythology, developed into the story in the intervening decades after the resurrection experience.
I find his arguments persuasive.
Bearing this in mind, did Jesus make a mistake in predicting the amount of time before his resurrection? If not, how can the following be explained:
Mark 8:31 – He [Jesus] then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.
Matthew 12:40 – (Jesus speaking) “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”
You can do the simple math here. Three days from Friday evening is Monday evening, not Sunday morning. According to tradition as I outlined above, Jesus was dead for about 36 hours – not even two full days. Yet in Mark, and again in Matthew, Jesus predicts he will rise “after three days” and that he will be “three days and three nights” in the heart of the earth.
Those who claim biblical infallibility are faced with a dilemma here. They must either admit that Jesus – the divine Son of God – got his own resurrection prediction wrong, or they must admit that the bible is fallible. It simply can’t be both ways. Either Jesus was dead and buried for a day and a half (as the “first day of the week” resurrection tradition implies), or he was dead and buried for three days and three nights, as an apparently earlier Christian tradition stated.
When you take a deeper look at the Synoptic texts (that is, Matthew, Mark, and Luke), a clear progression of events begins to come to light surrounding the three days/first day of the week dichotomy. (I exclude the Gospel of John from this because John has no references at all to Jesus predicting the progression of days between his crucifixion and his resurrection.)
To start, it is important to understand the background of just what “three days” meant to the average first century Jew. Three days, according to Jewish apocryphal teachings, was the amount of time that would pass after the end of the world before the ushering in of the kingdom of God. Obviously, this is counter-intuitive, as there could be no “days” after the “end of the world.” But that mindbending concept was sort of the point of the mythology – the kingdom of God is bigger than our concept of reality and stands squarely outside of our concept of space and time. Thus, the idea of significant events occurring around a 3-day time frame was common in Jewish scripture. In the Old Testament, there are no less than 70 different references to events occurring either “on the third day” or “after three days” or “within three days,” etc. Like the number 12 and its various multiples, 3 was an important number to the ancient Hebrews, and “three days” was a spiritual concept that was never meant to imply literal chronological time.
When the Gospel writers sat down to write their accounts of Jesus’s life, they had a clear and spiritually-relevant image of the significance of “three days.” As they wrote their accounts, they used this Jewish image midrashically – that is, they incorporated this ancient Jewish apocryphal concept into the story of Jesus of Nazareth as a means of displaying the importance of Jesus’s teachings on their own spiritual awakening.
However, in doing so, they also needed to fix the competing traditions within the Christian community of Jesus being dead “three days” before his resurrection (which appears to be the earlier tradition), and Jesus rising on “the first day of the week” (which appears to have developed sometime later).
Mark, the first gospel writer, writing in about 70 C.E. (that is, about two generations after the death of Jesus), does not appear to have a problem with the conflict. Throughout his Gospel, and on more than one occasion, he has Jesus predict that he will rise from the dead “after three days.” However, during his resurrection account, he goes with the dawn of Sunday morning tradition, stating that the women went “on the first day of the week” to anoint Jesus’s body and subsequently found the tomb empty.
Matthew was the next Gospel to be written, and it was composed about 10-15 years after Mark, around 80 C.E. The defining characteristic of this Gospel is its target audience of Jewish Christians. The Gospel is full of references to Old Testament stories and prophecies, and the purpose of the writer was clearly to persuade those of the Jewish faith and culture that Jesus was the anointed one of God, predicted and expected so frequently in Jewish scripture. Much of Matthew’s text is drawn directly from Mark, and it is almost universally accepted within scholarly and even most theological circles that Matthew used Mark’s Gospel as an outline. Much of Matthew has word-for-word transcriptions of Mark’s story. Interestingly, with the exception of the above-referenced verse wherein Jesus predicts his death to last three days and three nights, Matthew changes all of Mark’s “after three days” comments to “on the third day.”
Thus, you have examples like Matthew 16:21 – From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
As noted above, the one occasion where Matthew does use the “three days” motif is when Matthew is linking Jesus to the Old Testament story of Jonah. Clearly Matthew couldn’t change the established text regarding Jonah, so he stuck with the “three days” motif and had Jesus predict his time “in the heart of the earth” as “three days and three nights.” Again, Matthew’s purpose was to link Jesus to Old Testament prophecies and stories, and here he seems to have had a difficult choice to either connect Jesus to the Old Testament character of Jonah and therefore abide by the “three days” tradition, or throw the Jonah link out completely. He clearly decided it was more important to keep the Jonah link there, since it served his target purpose. Everywhere else, however, he changed “three days” to “on the third day,” obviously trying to account for Mark’s contradiction.
Luke, writing about 90 C.E. and 20 years after Mark, also used Mark as a guide and also carried on Matthew’s tradition of changing all of Mark’s “three days” statements. Whereas Mark has 5 different references to Jesus talking about his resurrection occurring “after three days,” Luke has no references using “three days” at all, and instead has 5 references to “on the third day.”
It seems quite clear that Matthew and Luke, writing later and using Mark as a guide, systematically changed all of Mark’s “three days” references to “on the third day,” since such a phrase could reasonably be construed to imply the first day of the week (that is, Sunday). It was a way for Matthew and Luke to reconcile the competing traditions of Jesus rising on Sunday morning and Jesus being dead for “three days.”
John Shelby Spong argues that the resurrection was a real event involving real experiences with real people, but he believes it was a kind of spiritual awakening, centered around Peter, and occurring after a lengthy passage of time from the date of Jesus’s death. The stories of dead bodies reanimating, empty tombs, a 3-day time frame between death and resurrection, and Jerusalem as the setting for the resurrection, Spong argues, are simply midrashic techniques and mythology, developed into the story in the intervening decades after the resurrection experience.
I find his arguments persuasive.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Gonads, Pendulous Breasts, and Menstrual Periods
It’s safe to say I could, in a pinch, probably take an adequate chest X-ray now.
This is the first week of my third quarter, and I am in my first positioning/laboratory class. This class meets three nights a week instead of just one, like my other classes, so it’s a 9-hour course. I also have a psychology class on Thursdays. We spent part of Monday night, and most of last night, in the lab, learning and then practicing chest X-rays.
I found it to be very interesting, and it’s definitely more fun to be up and doing something, hands-on, rather than sitting listening to a lecture. Of course, this also means that the playing field is more even now – my 4.0 and high test scores don’t mean much outside of the classroom. We get tested every week on the stuff we learn in the book, and we also have a clinical test every week on whatever body part we have learned to X-ray. So next week I’ll get graded on my competency to take a basic PA and lateral chest X-ray. We’re graded not only on whether we position correctly and set up the machine correctly, but even on the details like asking the right questions of the patient and our general bedside manner. There is a checklist with about 25 things that we are checked on.
The good thing about practicing in the laboratory with your classmates is that you learn very quickly to get over the natural embarrassment that comes with putting your hands all over someone’s body, asking people (particularly those of the opposite sex) to remove their clothes, including underwear, and asking women when their last period was. There is only one other man in my class of about 11 or 12 people, so pretty much all of my practice is on young, attractive, 20-something women.
God is a good and generous God.
Seriously though, when doing X-rays of women who are in child-bearing years, it’s standard operating procedure to ask them if they are pregnant, and if they are not, then to probe further and ask them about their last menstrual period. That’s just something I’ll have to get used to, I guess.
Oh, and another thing – when doing chest X-rays, if the woman has large, pendulous breasts, you have to ask her to pull them up and out to the side so they don’t obscure the image. Can’t WAIT to get a 50-year old grandmother in there with triple-E cups and have to ask her to haul them babies out of the way. Yikes. Not sure which is worse: that, or putting on the gonad shield.
All in all, though, I really like this class, and although I’m intimidated by the amount of information we have to learn, I’m excited about getting into the hands-on portion of this program, and I’m excited about the prospect of starting clinicals in a few months and then eventually being able to get out and work in this field.
This is the first week of my third quarter, and I am in my first positioning/laboratory class. This class meets three nights a week instead of just one, like my other classes, so it’s a 9-hour course. I also have a psychology class on Thursdays. We spent part of Monday night, and most of last night, in the lab, learning and then practicing chest X-rays.
I found it to be very interesting, and it’s definitely more fun to be up and doing something, hands-on, rather than sitting listening to a lecture. Of course, this also means that the playing field is more even now – my 4.0 and high test scores don’t mean much outside of the classroom. We get tested every week on the stuff we learn in the book, and we also have a clinical test every week on whatever body part we have learned to X-ray. So next week I’ll get graded on my competency to take a basic PA and lateral chest X-ray. We’re graded not only on whether we position correctly and set up the machine correctly, but even on the details like asking the right questions of the patient and our general bedside manner. There is a checklist with about 25 things that we are checked on.
The good thing about practicing in the laboratory with your classmates is that you learn very quickly to get over the natural embarrassment that comes with putting your hands all over someone’s body, asking people (particularly those of the opposite sex) to remove their clothes, including underwear, and asking women when their last period was. There is only one other man in my class of about 11 or 12 people, so pretty much all of my practice is on young, attractive, 20-something women.
God is a good and generous God.
Seriously though, when doing X-rays of women who are in child-bearing years, it’s standard operating procedure to ask them if they are pregnant, and if they are not, then to probe further and ask them about their last menstrual period. That’s just something I’ll have to get used to, I guess.
Oh, and another thing – when doing chest X-rays, if the woman has large, pendulous breasts, you have to ask her to pull them up and out to the side so they don’t obscure the image. Can’t WAIT to get a 50-year old grandmother in there with triple-E cups and have to ask her to haul them babies out of the way. Yikes. Not sure which is worse: that, or putting on the gonad shield.
All in all, though, I really like this class, and although I’m intimidated by the amount of information we have to learn, I’m excited about getting into the hands-on portion of this program, and I’m excited about the prospect of starting clinicals in a few months and then eventually being able to get out and work in this field.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Rush Tour 2007
The tour dates for this year's tour have been released. Last time around, in 2004, I got to see the opening show of the tour, as they opened in Nashville. This year, they're opening in Atlanta, swinging up the east coast into New England, then crossing over to the west coast, then finishing up in the midwest and Canada. So I won't be seeing them until toward the end of the tour this year.
They are coming to Cincinnati on September 1 (Labor Day weekend), and are also coming to Indianapolis and Columbus. I will definitely be going to the Cincinnati show, and will probably try to go to either Columbus or Indianapolis. It'll be expensive, but you only live once, right! It's not like they're going to be touring forever. I'll probably go with a group of fellow Rush fans to the Cincinnati show, and will go by myself, probably, to the Indianapolis or Columbus show.
Now the goal is to get good seats! Tickets go on sale April 12th or 14th, I think.
Also, classes start back up tonight. I have Rad 200 each night, Monday through Wednesday, followed by a psychology class on Thursday. So I'm back to 4 nights a week again, but only 2 classes. Rad 200 is the Positioning I class, so we will start doing a lot of "hands on" stuff now, I suspect. I'm looking forward to it. 'Specially since it's all girls in my class. Haha. Let's get hands on, ladies!!
They are coming to Cincinnati on September 1 (Labor Day weekend), and are also coming to Indianapolis and Columbus. I will definitely be going to the Cincinnati show, and will probably try to go to either Columbus or Indianapolis. It'll be expensive, but you only live once, right! It's not like they're going to be touring forever. I'll probably go with a group of fellow Rush fans to the Cincinnati show, and will go by myself, probably, to the Indianapolis or Columbus show.
Now the goal is to get good seats! Tickets go on sale April 12th or 14th, I think.
Also, classes start back up tonight. I have Rad 200 each night, Monday through Wednesday, followed by a psychology class on Thursday. So I'm back to 4 nights a week again, but only 2 classes. Rad 200 is the Positioning I class, so we will start doing a lot of "hands on" stuff now, I suspect. I'm looking forward to it. 'Specially since it's all girls in my class. Haha. Let's get hands on, ladies!!
Friday, March 23, 2007
Is God in Control?
“A man is on a long journey trying to escape from some villains who are out to get him. He gets to a wide open plain offering no place to hide and guaranteeing the faster villains will catch him. But then a ‘miracle’ fog hides everything, allowing him to escape. The character is able to communicate with a ‘higher power’ and learns the fog didn’t just ‘happen.’ The higher power knew of this need millennia ago and set the natural order of things so that the fog would be where it needed to be.”
This is a slight rewording of a comment made by a poster on an Internet message board. The poster was paraphrasing a science-fiction story he had read some years earlier. He went on to point out that this idea of God “setting the wheels in motion” really “resonated” with him. He was arguing that free will and determinism don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
On the surface, I suppose this sort of idea would resonate with just about anyone. It certainly resonated with me for a long time – well into my adulthood. It is a common and widely accepted idea within mainstream Christianity. It is the idea that “God is in control.”
The problem, for me, is that it does not hold up to scrutiny. In fact, it was through scrutinizing concepts like this that I eventually began to move away from a belief that God is, in fact, in control. It only takes a few minutes to see the inherent problems in this sort of theology. If, in the example above, God truly “set the wheels in motion” in order to make the fog appear at just the right time to save the character’s life, does that mean that when things do not go our way, God has set the wheels against us? Let me illustrate this point with a scenario.
At 8:07 a.m., a tractor-trailer driven by a driver who has been driving all night is going to run a red light at the corner of Main Street and Second Street. Unknowing, John Doe leaves his house at 8:00 a.m., as he does every morning. He pulls out of his street and makes his way through the neighborhood, which empties at the corner of Main and Second. About two minutes after leaving his house, but before getting out of his neighborhood, he realizes he forgot his lunch. He considers whether he should go back to get it. Tomorrow is payday, and he does not currently have any available cash, so he cannot go out to eat for lunch unless he charges his lunch. He does not want to do that, as his credit card is pretty full. Therefore, the only option is to either turn around and go back, or head on to work and just skip lunch. He chooses to go back. He turns around, heads back home, grabs his lunch, then leaves again. It is now 8:04. As he is turning out of his neighborhood at 8:07, his car is smashed by the tractor-trailer, and John Doe is paralyzed, doomed to live out the rest of his life as a paraplegic.
Now, you can see that there are several different ways this scenario could have turned out. John Doe could have left home the first time a minute early, therefore putting him at the intersection at 8:06 instead of 8:07. He could have not forgotten his lunch, therefore eliminating the need to go back home, and putting him at the intersection at 8:03. He could have not gone out to dinner the previous weekend and spent fifty bucks on his credit card, thereby making money tight by the end of the week, such that he could not afford to charge his lunch that day. Furthermore, the tractor-trailer driver could have stopped at a rest area to sleep, meaning at 8:07 he would not have been anywhere near that intersection, and when he did finally reach the intersection, he would not have been so tired that he ran the red light. The tractor-trailer driver could have gotten hung up at a weigh station a few extra minutes, putting him at the intersection at 8:09 instead of 8:07. He could have gotten stuck behind a slow poke who pulled out in front of him, delaying him by a few minutes.
But none of those things happened. Instead, everything worked together to cause that tractor-trailer to run that red light at 8:07, and to cause John Doe to be turning through that same intersection at 8:07, thereby leading to John Doe’s paralysis.
In this scenario, did God make it happen? Did God “set the wheels in motion” by allowing all those “what ifs” to come together in just the right way, such that John Doe ended up in a wheelchair? More importantly, why didn’t God “set the wheels in motion” to allow just one tiny little detail to change, such that John Doe and the tractor-trailer would not meet up in that intersection at the same time?
How would mainstream Christianity account for this tragedy? From my long experience in the church as a traditionally-believing Christian, I think I can say with certainty that the general answer would be that this is a flawed, cruel, uncaring world, and sometimes bad things happen to good people. Thus, we need God in order to cope with the cruel tragedies of life. God doesn’t make bad things happen. Bad things happen because Satan holds dominion over this world.
But what if this scenario had not turned out this way? What if John Doe had decided, for instance, to just go without lunch that day? He’s been eating a little too much lately and has packed on a few extra pounds, so it would do him some good to skip a meal. Thus, he decides, at 8:03, to just head on to work instead of turning around for his lunch. He pulls through the intersection safely and moves on with life. He later learns from a neighbor that a tractor-trailer ran a red light at the intersection just a few minutes after he pulled through, but no one was hurt because no car was in the intersection at the time.
Considering this change, now how would mainstream Christianity account for this situation? Again, as a church alumnus and a nearly 30-year veteran of traditional Christian beliefs, I can say that the general answer would be that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord (to quote the Apostle Paul), and that God helped set the wheels in motion to keep John Doe out of that intersection when that tractor-trailer came rumbling through.
Unfortunately, it cannot be both ways. Either the world is a cruel, cold, uncaring place where bad and good things happen based on the whim of chance, without any interference from God, or God is in control of everything, meaning he caused both John Doe’s paralysis in the first scenario and John Doe’s salvation in the second scenario.
Most Christians want to have it both ways. When bad things happen, they want to turn to God for comfort and solace against a cold, cruel, indifferent natural world. When good things happen, they want to attribute it to God’s control.
For me, the inability to reconcile these dichotomous positions caused me to ultimately move away from the belief that God sets any wheels in motions, intervenes in any way in history, or has anything at all to do with tragedies and blessings.
I believe in God with all my heart, soul, and mind. I believe in a God of infinite love. I believe God can be experienced in very real ways. But I do not believe in a god who intervenes in history, either directly or indirectly. I do not believe in a god who has the power to prevent tragedies, but chooses not to. I do not believe in a god who bestows blessings and fortune and success and safekeeping on some, while leaving others to the whims of a cold, cruel world. I do not believe in a god whose ways are so self-contradictory, illogical, and inexplicable that he must be worshipped as “mysterious.”
When we can learn to love unashamedly and without prejudice, when we can learn to live fully in each and every moment, and when we can learn to be the very best that we can be, we can move into communion and life with God. And when we do that, the need to explain tragedy and blessing in supernatural terms dissipates (in fact, the very idea that events on earth happen at the intervention or neglect of a whimsical god becomes absurd and incompatible with Godly thought). Instead, we can simply face the intersections of life with courage and conviction, we can live as children of God in happiness and peace, and we can truly say that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord.
This is a slight rewording of a comment made by a poster on an Internet message board. The poster was paraphrasing a science-fiction story he had read some years earlier. He went on to point out that this idea of God “setting the wheels in motion” really “resonated” with him. He was arguing that free will and determinism don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
On the surface, I suppose this sort of idea would resonate with just about anyone. It certainly resonated with me for a long time – well into my adulthood. It is a common and widely accepted idea within mainstream Christianity. It is the idea that “God is in control.”
The problem, for me, is that it does not hold up to scrutiny. In fact, it was through scrutinizing concepts like this that I eventually began to move away from a belief that God is, in fact, in control. It only takes a few minutes to see the inherent problems in this sort of theology. If, in the example above, God truly “set the wheels in motion” in order to make the fog appear at just the right time to save the character’s life, does that mean that when things do not go our way, God has set the wheels against us? Let me illustrate this point with a scenario.
At 8:07 a.m., a tractor-trailer driven by a driver who has been driving all night is going to run a red light at the corner of Main Street and Second Street. Unknowing, John Doe leaves his house at 8:00 a.m., as he does every morning. He pulls out of his street and makes his way through the neighborhood, which empties at the corner of Main and Second. About two minutes after leaving his house, but before getting out of his neighborhood, he realizes he forgot his lunch. He considers whether he should go back to get it. Tomorrow is payday, and he does not currently have any available cash, so he cannot go out to eat for lunch unless he charges his lunch. He does not want to do that, as his credit card is pretty full. Therefore, the only option is to either turn around and go back, or head on to work and just skip lunch. He chooses to go back. He turns around, heads back home, grabs his lunch, then leaves again. It is now 8:04. As he is turning out of his neighborhood at 8:07, his car is smashed by the tractor-trailer, and John Doe is paralyzed, doomed to live out the rest of his life as a paraplegic.
Now, you can see that there are several different ways this scenario could have turned out. John Doe could have left home the first time a minute early, therefore putting him at the intersection at 8:06 instead of 8:07. He could have not forgotten his lunch, therefore eliminating the need to go back home, and putting him at the intersection at 8:03. He could have not gone out to dinner the previous weekend and spent fifty bucks on his credit card, thereby making money tight by the end of the week, such that he could not afford to charge his lunch that day. Furthermore, the tractor-trailer driver could have stopped at a rest area to sleep, meaning at 8:07 he would not have been anywhere near that intersection, and when he did finally reach the intersection, he would not have been so tired that he ran the red light. The tractor-trailer driver could have gotten hung up at a weigh station a few extra minutes, putting him at the intersection at 8:09 instead of 8:07. He could have gotten stuck behind a slow poke who pulled out in front of him, delaying him by a few minutes.
But none of those things happened. Instead, everything worked together to cause that tractor-trailer to run that red light at 8:07, and to cause John Doe to be turning through that same intersection at 8:07, thereby leading to John Doe’s paralysis.
In this scenario, did God make it happen? Did God “set the wheels in motion” by allowing all those “what ifs” to come together in just the right way, such that John Doe ended up in a wheelchair? More importantly, why didn’t God “set the wheels in motion” to allow just one tiny little detail to change, such that John Doe and the tractor-trailer would not meet up in that intersection at the same time?
How would mainstream Christianity account for this tragedy? From my long experience in the church as a traditionally-believing Christian, I think I can say with certainty that the general answer would be that this is a flawed, cruel, uncaring world, and sometimes bad things happen to good people. Thus, we need God in order to cope with the cruel tragedies of life. God doesn’t make bad things happen. Bad things happen because Satan holds dominion over this world.
But what if this scenario had not turned out this way? What if John Doe had decided, for instance, to just go without lunch that day? He’s been eating a little too much lately and has packed on a few extra pounds, so it would do him some good to skip a meal. Thus, he decides, at 8:03, to just head on to work instead of turning around for his lunch. He pulls through the intersection safely and moves on with life. He later learns from a neighbor that a tractor-trailer ran a red light at the intersection just a few minutes after he pulled through, but no one was hurt because no car was in the intersection at the time.
Considering this change, now how would mainstream Christianity account for this situation? Again, as a church alumnus and a nearly 30-year veteran of traditional Christian beliefs, I can say that the general answer would be that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord (to quote the Apostle Paul), and that God helped set the wheels in motion to keep John Doe out of that intersection when that tractor-trailer came rumbling through.
Unfortunately, it cannot be both ways. Either the world is a cruel, cold, uncaring place where bad and good things happen based on the whim of chance, without any interference from God, or God is in control of everything, meaning he caused both John Doe’s paralysis in the first scenario and John Doe’s salvation in the second scenario.
Most Christians want to have it both ways. When bad things happen, they want to turn to God for comfort and solace against a cold, cruel, indifferent natural world. When good things happen, they want to attribute it to God’s control.
For me, the inability to reconcile these dichotomous positions caused me to ultimately move away from the belief that God sets any wheels in motions, intervenes in any way in history, or has anything at all to do with tragedies and blessings.
I believe in God with all my heart, soul, and mind. I believe in a God of infinite love. I believe God can be experienced in very real ways. But I do not believe in a god who intervenes in history, either directly or indirectly. I do not believe in a god who has the power to prevent tragedies, but chooses not to. I do not believe in a god who bestows blessings and fortune and success and safekeeping on some, while leaving others to the whims of a cold, cruel world. I do not believe in a god whose ways are so self-contradictory, illogical, and inexplicable that he must be worshipped as “mysterious.”
When we can learn to love unashamedly and without prejudice, when we can learn to live fully in each and every moment, and when we can learn to be the very best that we can be, we can move into communion and life with God. And when we do that, the need to explain tragedy and blessing in supernatural terms dissipates (in fact, the very idea that events on earth happen at the intervention or neglect of a whimsical god becomes absurd and incompatible with Godly thought). Instead, we can simply face the intersections of life with courage and conviction, we can live as children of God in happiness and peace, and we can truly say that all things work together for good for those who love the Lord.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Beware the Ides of March!
"A certain seer warned Caesar to be on his guard against a great peril on the day of the month of March which the Romans call the Ides; and when the day had come and Caesar was on his way to the Senate house, he greeted the seer with a jest and said: ‘Well, the Ides of March are come,’ and the seer said to him softly: ‘Ay, they are come, but they are not gone.’”
– Plutarch, Parallel Lives, circa 100 C.E.
Today is the 2,051st anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar.
According to the account of Nicolaus of Damascus, who visited Rome just a few years after Caesar’s death and interviewed many of the eye witnesses to the assassination, Caesar was stabbed 23 times, and each conspirator made sure to get at least one stab in, even after he lay dying, so that they could all be “official” assassins of Caesar.
The conspirators, all of whom were Roman Senators, felt justified in their plot, believing they were committing tyrannicide, rather than assassinating a legitimate head of state. Though Caesar, only a month earlier, had publicly refused a diadem and a proclamation of kingship by Marc Antony, they believed Caesar planned to dismantle the Republic and become an autocrat.
By this time, Caesar already held the title of Dictator for Life, but this, alone, was not remarkable enough to justify fears of a destruction of the Republic. Pompey the Great, only several years earlier, and Lucius Cornelius Sulla about forty years earlier, had both held the same title.
Instead, the conspirators feared that Caesar’s planned military conquest of Dacia and Parthia (areas in the modern day Balkans and Iran) would be the final stepping stone in Caesar’s rise to kingship. Ancient lore stated that Parthia would only be subdued by a king, and as such, Caesar had been given permission to wear a crown while campaigning outside of the province of Italia. The conspirators feared that Caesar would return from the campaign as a king and never relinquish the title.
Caesar didn’t help his own cause when, after returning from the civil war with Pompey, he had coins minted with his own likeness on them. This was the first time a living Roman had been put on a coin. He also approved of a statue of himself placed alongside the seven ancient kings of Rome, as well as another statue placed in the Temple of Quirinus – who was the deified figure identified with Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome.
Additionally, sometime prior to the assassination, Caesar failed to stand when receiving several honorary titles bestowed upon him by the Senate. The conspirators took this as an indication that Caesar felt a sense of entitlement and was ungrateful. Caesar’s supporters claimed that he failed to stand because he had just had an episode of epilepsy and was afraid he would collapse if he stood up (he was known for having occasional “fits,” and it was the veritable “thorn in his side” throughout his public life as he attempted to hide the condition from the public; the condition had worsened as he had gotten older).
It will never be known for certain whether an epileptic fit was truly the reason Caesar didn’t stand to receive his honors, but either way, for the conspirators, it more or less sealed Caesar’s fate.
The conspirators mistakenly believed their plot would save the Roman Republic. In fact, Caesar’s assassination not only failed to save the Republic, it ushered in the rise of the Roman Empire and the complete destruction of the values of the Republic, and it set the stage for Octavian (Caesar’s nephew and named heir) to seize the reigns of power and become the very autocratic ruler Caesar’s assassins had feared.
Caesar had planned to leave for his campaign in Dacia and Parthia in April of 44 C.E. Thus, the conspirators knew they must implement their plan prior to his departure.
On March 15, a Senate meeting was convened under the auspices of having Caesar read a petition. The Senate was to meet at the Theater of Pompey. This was a temporary meeting place for the Senate, as a new Senate house was under construction at the time. (The new Senate house, incidentally, was to be named in honor of Caesar – another thing that fed the conspirators’ ire.) While waiting for a quorum, several of Caesar’s friends and family tried to dissuade him from going. His wife claimed to have dreamed of his death the night before, and all the augers and soothsayers were proclaiming bad omens (augers and soothsayers were always called upon before meetings of the Senate to predict favorable or unfavorable outcomes). Most significantly, Marc Antony had heard rumors that the Senate meeting was a ruse, and that something bad was going to happen instead. He begged Caesar not to go.
Caesar was reportedly about to give in when his longtime friend Marcus Brutus came to tell him quorum had been reached and to escort him to the Theater of Pompey. According to the account of Nicolaus of Damascus, Brutus reportedly told Caesar to “turn your back on these people’s nonsense and do not postpone the business that deserves the attention of Caesar and of the great empire, but consider your own worth a favorable omen.”
Brutus, of course, was one of the conspirators, and, thanks to Shakespeare, has been remembered most of all for his betrayal of his friend.
Several years earlier, Brutus – who had been one of Caesar’s top generals – had betrayed Caesar during the civil war and had fought instead for Pompey. When Pompey was defeated, Brutus was captured. But instead of executing him as all his advisors insisted, and custom dictated, Caesar pardoned Brutus and allowed him back into his inner circle. Upon his return to Rome after the civil war, he even named Brutus as his second heir, should Octavian die before Caesar.
His compassion for his old friend proved to be his undoing. In fact, most of the conspirators were men Caesar had pardoned in the past for various betrayals and transgressions, most associated with the civil war.
Brutus led Caesar to the Theater of Pompey, and instructed him to enter the portico adjoining the main hall. Marc Antony was still there, attempting to turn Caesar back, but Caesar followed Brutus toward the portico, leaving Marc Antony behind.
Caesar entered the portico where the Senate was convened and began reading the false petition. Casca, one of the conspirators – and the person who, the evening before, had inadvertently hinted at the plot to Marc Antony – stepped forward, snatched Caesar’s toga, and stabbed him in the shoulder. Caesar grabbed him by the arm and reportedly said, “Villain Casca, what are you doing?” Casca called for help, and the other conspirators jumped to his aid and began stabbing Caesar with daggers hidden underneath their togas.
Caesar, naturally, was trying to get away, and the melee ended up outside on the steps of the portico. Caesar, bleeding and seriously injured, tripped and fell onto the steps, where he was overcome by the assassins.
Reports of his last words vary, and the actual truth is not known. The familiar line “Et tu, Brute?” (“Even you, Brutus?”) was invented by Shakespeare, and is therefore not a historical account of what was said. One of Caesar’s ancient biographers, Suetonius, reports that his final words were “You too, child?” directed at Brutus (this, of course, is the source of inspiration for Shakespeare’s line). Suetonius, however, states that Caesar spoke the words in Greek, not Latin. Plutarch, another of Caesar’s biographers, states that Caesar said nothing, and instead covered his head with his toga in resignation when he realized Brutus was among the assassins.
In the wake of the assassination, the conspirators went through Rome proclaiming that Rome was free again, but mob violence erupted all over the city and a large portion of the Forum was burned. Ultimately, a series of civil wars broke out, waged by Marc Antony and Octavian, eventually ending with Marc Antony’s suicide (along with Cleopatra), the deaths of most if not all of the conspirators, and Octavian’s rise to emperor. (Octavian is better remembered by some as the Caesar Augustus referred to in Luke’s New Testament narrative of Jesus’s birth – he had given himself the new name after becoming emperor.)
Considering the dramatic impact on Roman history that Caesar’s assassination had, and considering the dramatic impact on world history that the Roman Empire had, the Ides of March may be the single most important date in history.
– Plutarch, Parallel Lives, circa 100 C.E.
Today is the 2,051st anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar.
According to the account of Nicolaus of Damascus, who visited Rome just a few years after Caesar’s death and interviewed many of the eye witnesses to the assassination, Caesar was stabbed 23 times, and each conspirator made sure to get at least one stab in, even after he lay dying, so that they could all be “official” assassins of Caesar.
The conspirators, all of whom were Roman Senators, felt justified in their plot, believing they were committing tyrannicide, rather than assassinating a legitimate head of state. Though Caesar, only a month earlier, had publicly refused a diadem and a proclamation of kingship by Marc Antony, they believed Caesar planned to dismantle the Republic and become an autocrat.
By this time, Caesar already held the title of Dictator for Life, but this, alone, was not remarkable enough to justify fears of a destruction of the Republic. Pompey the Great, only several years earlier, and Lucius Cornelius Sulla about forty years earlier, had both held the same title.
Instead, the conspirators feared that Caesar’s planned military conquest of Dacia and Parthia (areas in the modern day Balkans and Iran) would be the final stepping stone in Caesar’s rise to kingship. Ancient lore stated that Parthia would only be subdued by a king, and as such, Caesar had been given permission to wear a crown while campaigning outside of the province of Italia. The conspirators feared that Caesar would return from the campaign as a king and never relinquish the title.
Caesar didn’t help his own cause when, after returning from the civil war with Pompey, he had coins minted with his own likeness on them. This was the first time a living Roman had been put on a coin. He also approved of a statue of himself placed alongside the seven ancient kings of Rome, as well as another statue placed in the Temple of Quirinus – who was the deified figure identified with Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome.
Additionally, sometime prior to the assassination, Caesar failed to stand when receiving several honorary titles bestowed upon him by the Senate. The conspirators took this as an indication that Caesar felt a sense of entitlement and was ungrateful. Caesar’s supporters claimed that he failed to stand because he had just had an episode of epilepsy and was afraid he would collapse if he stood up (he was known for having occasional “fits,” and it was the veritable “thorn in his side” throughout his public life as he attempted to hide the condition from the public; the condition had worsened as he had gotten older).
It will never be known for certain whether an epileptic fit was truly the reason Caesar didn’t stand to receive his honors, but either way, for the conspirators, it more or less sealed Caesar’s fate.
The conspirators mistakenly believed their plot would save the Roman Republic. In fact, Caesar’s assassination not only failed to save the Republic, it ushered in the rise of the Roman Empire and the complete destruction of the values of the Republic, and it set the stage for Octavian (Caesar’s nephew and named heir) to seize the reigns of power and become the very autocratic ruler Caesar’s assassins had feared.
Caesar had planned to leave for his campaign in Dacia and Parthia in April of 44 C.E. Thus, the conspirators knew they must implement their plan prior to his departure.
On March 15, a Senate meeting was convened under the auspices of having Caesar read a petition. The Senate was to meet at the Theater of Pompey. This was a temporary meeting place for the Senate, as a new Senate house was under construction at the time. (The new Senate house, incidentally, was to be named in honor of Caesar – another thing that fed the conspirators’ ire.) While waiting for a quorum, several of Caesar’s friends and family tried to dissuade him from going. His wife claimed to have dreamed of his death the night before, and all the augers and soothsayers were proclaiming bad omens (augers and soothsayers were always called upon before meetings of the Senate to predict favorable or unfavorable outcomes). Most significantly, Marc Antony had heard rumors that the Senate meeting was a ruse, and that something bad was going to happen instead. He begged Caesar not to go.
Caesar was reportedly about to give in when his longtime friend Marcus Brutus came to tell him quorum had been reached and to escort him to the Theater of Pompey. According to the account of Nicolaus of Damascus, Brutus reportedly told Caesar to “turn your back on these people’s nonsense and do not postpone the business that deserves the attention of Caesar and of the great empire, but consider your own worth a favorable omen.”
Brutus, of course, was one of the conspirators, and, thanks to Shakespeare, has been remembered most of all for his betrayal of his friend.
Several years earlier, Brutus – who had been one of Caesar’s top generals – had betrayed Caesar during the civil war and had fought instead for Pompey. When Pompey was defeated, Brutus was captured. But instead of executing him as all his advisors insisted, and custom dictated, Caesar pardoned Brutus and allowed him back into his inner circle. Upon his return to Rome after the civil war, he even named Brutus as his second heir, should Octavian die before Caesar.
His compassion for his old friend proved to be his undoing. In fact, most of the conspirators were men Caesar had pardoned in the past for various betrayals and transgressions, most associated with the civil war.
Brutus led Caesar to the Theater of Pompey, and instructed him to enter the portico adjoining the main hall. Marc Antony was still there, attempting to turn Caesar back, but Caesar followed Brutus toward the portico, leaving Marc Antony behind.
Caesar entered the portico where the Senate was convened and began reading the false petition. Casca, one of the conspirators – and the person who, the evening before, had inadvertently hinted at the plot to Marc Antony – stepped forward, snatched Caesar’s toga, and stabbed him in the shoulder. Caesar grabbed him by the arm and reportedly said, “Villain Casca, what are you doing?” Casca called for help, and the other conspirators jumped to his aid and began stabbing Caesar with daggers hidden underneath their togas.
Caesar, naturally, was trying to get away, and the melee ended up outside on the steps of the portico. Caesar, bleeding and seriously injured, tripped and fell onto the steps, where he was overcome by the assassins.
Reports of his last words vary, and the actual truth is not known. The familiar line “Et tu, Brute?” (“Even you, Brutus?”) was invented by Shakespeare, and is therefore not a historical account of what was said. One of Caesar’s ancient biographers, Suetonius, reports that his final words were “You too, child?” directed at Brutus (this, of course, is the source of inspiration for Shakespeare’s line). Suetonius, however, states that Caesar spoke the words in Greek, not Latin. Plutarch, another of Caesar’s biographers, states that Caesar said nothing, and instead covered his head with his toga in resignation when he realized Brutus was among the assassins.
In the wake of the assassination, the conspirators went through Rome proclaiming that Rome was free again, but mob violence erupted all over the city and a large portion of the Forum was burned. Ultimately, a series of civil wars broke out, waged by Marc Antony and Octavian, eventually ending with Marc Antony’s suicide (along with Cleopatra), the deaths of most if not all of the conspirators, and Octavian’s rise to emperor. (Octavian is better remembered by some as the Caesar Augustus referred to in Luke’s New Testament narrative of Jesus’s birth – he had given himself the new name after becoming emperor.)
Considering the dramatic impact on Roman history that Caesar’s assassination had, and considering the dramatic impact on world history that the Roman Empire had, the Ides of March may be the single most important date in history.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Far Cry
Rush has a new single out called Far Cry. You can hear it in its entirety on their website Rush.com.
I think the single is fantastic. They had posted a 10-second "teaser" of the song back in February, which sounded great, so I've been greatly anticipating it since then. It's got a good mix of classic Rush technique (syncopated rhythms, odd time signatures, etc.) while also displaying a modern rock sound. From a musical standpoint, it is simultaneously reminiscent of something off their 2002 Vapor Trails album, but also like some of the sounds from their late 1970's concept albums.
If the whole album (due out May 1) sounds like this song, it is going to be a truly crowning achievement for them.
The album is called Snakes & Arrows and reportedly deals quite a bit with religious concepts/themes. The phrase "Snakes & Arrows" refers to an ancient Hindu game concerned with the ups and downs of life's spiritual journey (it is what our children's game Chutes & Ladders is based on).
I think the single is fantastic. They had posted a 10-second "teaser" of the song back in February, which sounded great, so I've been greatly anticipating it since then. It's got a good mix of classic Rush technique (syncopated rhythms, odd time signatures, etc.) while also displaying a modern rock sound. From a musical standpoint, it is simultaneously reminiscent of something off their 2002 Vapor Trails album, but also like some of the sounds from their late 1970's concept albums.
If the whole album (due out May 1) sounds like this song, it is going to be a truly crowning achievement for them.
The album is called Snakes & Arrows and reportedly deals quite a bit with religious concepts/themes. The phrase "Snakes & Arrows" refers to an ancient Hindu game concerned with the ups and downs of life's spiritual journey (it is what our children's game Chutes & Ladders is based on).
Friday, March 09, 2007
Adventurous, and Expensive, Afternoon
I had an adventurous afternoon yesterday. But before I get into that, it is necessary to give a bit of background information.
Earlier this week, my wife told me she had to go to Louisville on Thursday for a conference. In discussing this, she told me that she was nervous, because her car just “didn’t feel right” lately, and she was worried about it breaking down on her. I suggested that she could take my car, if she felt that worried, but she sort of blew it off and said it would probably be fine. We discussed how, if she were to break down, we have people/contacts in Louisville we could call to come help her. Not really too big of a cause for worry. After our conversation, I didn’t give it much more thought.
So yesterday, around 3:50, my wife called to say she was leaving Louisville from the conference, and was on her way back to Lexington. We chatted for a few minutes, then got off the phone. I went back to what I was doing, and within just a minute or two, she called me again. I was kind of irritated because she does that fairly frequently – she will call, we’ll talk, we’ll hang up, then she’ll remember something else and call right back.
Well, this time, when we got on the phone, her voice sounded panicky and she was saying that there was something wrong with her car. When she pressed the gas pedal, the RPM’s were going up, but she was not getting any speed. She was slowing down well below the speed limit as she attempted to go up a short incline in the highway. We stayed on the phone and she grew more panicky by the moment, saying that she could get speed as she went downhill, but could hardly get uphill at all. Then, a lot of white smoke started coming out from behind/under the car. I told her to slow down but keep trying to move forward to get to the next exit. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the next exit was about 8 or 9 miles away. She had just passed the interchange of I-64 and I-265 (that’s the Gene Snyder Freeway, which sort of marks the outer boundary of Louisville to the east), so she was about 3 miles past the Gene Snyder, outside of Louisville, heading toward Lexington.
She finally stated that she was going to have to pull over. When she pulled over, she felt like she didn’t get over far enough, so she attempted to start the car again to pull over farther, and the car wouldn’t start at all.
By now, I was telling her to call 911 to ask for a police officer to come by, and to call some of our friends in Louisville. I hurried out the door and jumped in my car. It was about 4:00. I had to get out of downtown Lexington right as rush hour was starting, I had to stop and get gas, and then I had to drive about 60 miles (58 miles, according to Google Maps) to the Gene Snyder, where I had to double back about 3 more miles to the spot where she was pulled over.
I did it in about 55 minutes.
Definitely the quickest Lexington to Louisville trip I’ve ever made. On the way, I was in contact with my wife most of the time. She had tried to call some of our friends, but they weren’t home. I called a friend of mine who doesn’t live far from where she was, and he was at home, but was getting ready to leave for work. He said he could go get her, however, if I needed him too. Fortunately, the police officer showed up fairly quickly, and was very accommodating and nice, so I called my friend back and told him he didn’t need to come.
The police officer stayed with her a while and then gave her a direct line, emergency number to call should someone approach her car. He also promised to do his normal circuit and then come back to check on her. In the meantime, she called a tow truck place that he said he trusted, and they agreed to come out and tow the car back to a dealership in Louisville (it would have cost nearly $300 to have them tow it to Lexington), and they agreed to take the keys and give them to the dealership so that we didn’t have to go over there in person.
When I was about 20 minutes away, my wife mentioned that there were men cleaning up trash along the highway nearby. Of course, these would be convicted criminals, probably out on probation, doing required community service. She told me that one of them was very close to the car picking up trash, and kept looking over at her in curiosity. Right about that time, like a deus ex machina, the police officer showed back up. He came over to her window and said, “I think I’ll just go ahead and stay with you now until your husband and the tow truck get here.” She felt very relieved by that, as did I.
After I got there, we had to wait another 15 minutes or so for the tow truck. I had just finished drinking a 20-ounce glass of water right before I left, and by this time I really had to pee. Fortunately, once the tow truck got there, we were able to go ahead and leave, letting him take care of hooking the car up and towing it back to the dealership. I stopped at a rest area to relieve myself.
There were two other twists involved here. First, both our kids were still at daycare. The youngest stays with a private sitter, but our oldest is in a traditional daycare that closes at 6:00. We didn’t pull away from the tow truck until about 5:20, and then we had to stop for me to go to the bathroom. Since we don’t have any family in Lexington, we had no one to call. Fortunately, our youngest daughter’s private sitter had no problem just keeping her until we could get her, and my oldest daughter’s best friend’s mother was willing to pick her up and take her back to her house, which is in a neighboring subdivision.
The second twist was that my Thursday class started at 6:00, and I had a paper due, along with a 10-minute PowerPoint presentation to give. I could not miss the class. Fortunately, it is a laid back class with a very easygoing instructor, and I knew he wouldn’t mind if I had to be late. I called and left a message for him.
In the end, I managed to leave downtown Lexington around 4:00, right at the start of rush hour, stop and get gas, get all the way to the Gene Snyder Freeway in Louisville, 60 miles away, double back 3 miles, sit on the side of the interstate for 15 or 20 minutes waiting for the tow truck, stop at a rest area to pee, then get all the way to Winchester Road in Lexington to my school, get inside and change into my scrubs, and get into my classroom – all by 6:15.
Not bad, eh?
The bad news, of course, is that my wife’s clutch burned out, and the car won’t be ready until Wednesday, and we won’t be able to pick it up until next Friday, and it’s going to set us back $1900. Her parents are going to pay for a rental car for us, which is very nice and helpful of them.
So much for getting our credit cards paid off with our tax refund! But, at least we have the money right now to pay for it (if this had happened even 2 months ago, I don’t know what we would have done), and at least it happened on a warm, sunny day, there was plenty of traffic around so my wife wasn’t alone on a deserted stretch of highway, there was a cop there very quickly who was very nice and helpful, it wasn’t a day where she accidentally forgot her cell phone, and it happened on a day when I didn’t have a major test or a class with an uptight, stickler instructor.
The moral of the story – when you suspect something might be wrong with your car, don’t attempt to drive it to Louisville!
Earlier this week, my wife told me she had to go to Louisville on Thursday for a conference. In discussing this, she told me that she was nervous, because her car just “didn’t feel right” lately, and she was worried about it breaking down on her. I suggested that she could take my car, if she felt that worried, but she sort of blew it off and said it would probably be fine. We discussed how, if she were to break down, we have people/contacts in Louisville we could call to come help her. Not really too big of a cause for worry. After our conversation, I didn’t give it much more thought.
So yesterday, around 3:50, my wife called to say she was leaving Louisville from the conference, and was on her way back to Lexington. We chatted for a few minutes, then got off the phone. I went back to what I was doing, and within just a minute or two, she called me again. I was kind of irritated because she does that fairly frequently – she will call, we’ll talk, we’ll hang up, then she’ll remember something else and call right back.
Well, this time, when we got on the phone, her voice sounded panicky and she was saying that there was something wrong with her car. When she pressed the gas pedal, the RPM’s were going up, but she was not getting any speed. She was slowing down well below the speed limit as she attempted to go up a short incline in the highway. We stayed on the phone and she grew more panicky by the moment, saying that she could get speed as she went downhill, but could hardly get uphill at all. Then, a lot of white smoke started coming out from behind/under the car. I told her to slow down but keep trying to move forward to get to the next exit. Unfortunately, as it turned out, the next exit was about 8 or 9 miles away. She had just passed the interchange of I-64 and I-265 (that’s the Gene Snyder Freeway, which sort of marks the outer boundary of Louisville to the east), so she was about 3 miles past the Gene Snyder, outside of Louisville, heading toward Lexington.
She finally stated that she was going to have to pull over. When she pulled over, she felt like she didn’t get over far enough, so she attempted to start the car again to pull over farther, and the car wouldn’t start at all.
By now, I was telling her to call 911 to ask for a police officer to come by, and to call some of our friends in Louisville. I hurried out the door and jumped in my car. It was about 4:00. I had to get out of downtown Lexington right as rush hour was starting, I had to stop and get gas, and then I had to drive about 60 miles (58 miles, according to Google Maps) to the Gene Snyder, where I had to double back about 3 more miles to the spot where she was pulled over.
I did it in about 55 minutes.
Definitely the quickest Lexington to Louisville trip I’ve ever made. On the way, I was in contact with my wife most of the time. She had tried to call some of our friends, but they weren’t home. I called a friend of mine who doesn’t live far from where she was, and he was at home, but was getting ready to leave for work. He said he could go get her, however, if I needed him too. Fortunately, the police officer showed up fairly quickly, and was very accommodating and nice, so I called my friend back and told him he didn’t need to come.
The police officer stayed with her a while and then gave her a direct line, emergency number to call should someone approach her car. He also promised to do his normal circuit and then come back to check on her. In the meantime, she called a tow truck place that he said he trusted, and they agreed to come out and tow the car back to a dealership in Louisville (it would have cost nearly $300 to have them tow it to Lexington), and they agreed to take the keys and give them to the dealership so that we didn’t have to go over there in person.
When I was about 20 minutes away, my wife mentioned that there were men cleaning up trash along the highway nearby. Of course, these would be convicted criminals, probably out on probation, doing required community service. She told me that one of them was very close to the car picking up trash, and kept looking over at her in curiosity. Right about that time, like a deus ex machina, the police officer showed back up. He came over to her window and said, “I think I’ll just go ahead and stay with you now until your husband and the tow truck get here.” She felt very relieved by that, as did I.
After I got there, we had to wait another 15 minutes or so for the tow truck. I had just finished drinking a 20-ounce glass of water right before I left, and by this time I really had to pee. Fortunately, once the tow truck got there, we were able to go ahead and leave, letting him take care of hooking the car up and towing it back to the dealership. I stopped at a rest area to relieve myself.
There were two other twists involved here. First, both our kids were still at daycare. The youngest stays with a private sitter, but our oldest is in a traditional daycare that closes at 6:00. We didn’t pull away from the tow truck until about 5:20, and then we had to stop for me to go to the bathroom. Since we don’t have any family in Lexington, we had no one to call. Fortunately, our youngest daughter’s private sitter had no problem just keeping her until we could get her, and my oldest daughter’s best friend’s mother was willing to pick her up and take her back to her house, which is in a neighboring subdivision.
The second twist was that my Thursday class started at 6:00, and I had a paper due, along with a 10-minute PowerPoint presentation to give. I could not miss the class. Fortunately, it is a laid back class with a very easygoing instructor, and I knew he wouldn’t mind if I had to be late. I called and left a message for him.
In the end, I managed to leave downtown Lexington around 4:00, right at the start of rush hour, stop and get gas, get all the way to the Gene Snyder Freeway in Louisville, 60 miles away, double back 3 miles, sit on the side of the interstate for 15 or 20 minutes waiting for the tow truck, stop at a rest area to pee, then get all the way to Winchester Road in Lexington to my school, get inside and change into my scrubs, and get into my classroom – all by 6:15.
Not bad, eh?
The bad news, of course, is that my wife’s clutch burned out, and the car won’t be ready until Wednesday, and we won’t be able to pick it up until next Friday, and it’s going to set us back $1900. Her parents are going to pay for a rental car for us, which is very nice and helpful of them.
So much for getting our credit cards paid off with our tax refund! But, at least we have the money right now to pay for it (if this had happened even 2 months ago, I don’t know what we would have done), and at least it happened on a warm, sunny day, there was plenty of traffic around so my wife wasn’t alone on a deserted stretch of highway, there was a cop there very quickly who was very nice and helpful, it wasn’t a day where she accidentally forgot her cell phone, and it happened on a day when I didn’t have a major test or a class with an uptight, stickler instructor.
The moral of the story – when you suspect something might be wrong with your car, don’t attempt to drive it to Louisville!
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Hell: The Disgrace of Christianity
I recently ran a poll on an Internet message board I frequent, asking respondents to choose what they believe God will do with humanity at the end of time. Among the choices were the following:
1) All non-Christians will go to hell.
2) Anyone who doesn’t believe in God will go to hell.
3) People will get a chance to accept God before the final decision is made.
4) Only the most evil and unrepentant will go to hell.
5) God will have mercy on everyone.
I then asked them to choose what they would do if they were God. The same choices applied. My gut feeling was that some people would choose answers 1 or 2 in the first poll (believing that God would either send all non-Christians to hell, or at least all non-believers to hell), but that far fewer people would choose answers 1 or 2 for the second poll.
My assumptions proved true. For the first poll, two respondents believed that all non-Christians would go to hell, and one respondent believed that anyone who didn’t believe in God would go to hell. The majority, of course, chose something between answers 3, 4, and 5. Yet no one, when answering the second poll – the one about what they would do if they were God – answered choice 1 or 2.
What does this say about our conceptions of God? Could it be true that these rebellious, sinful, hopeless creatures called human beings are more merciful, forgiving, and loving than the very God who created them? If one abides by a traditional/evangelical Christian view of reality, this seems to be the only assumption one can make. We think God will send all non-believers, and maybe even all people who aren’t specifically born again Christians, to hell, yet if we were God ourselves, we would be much more lenient, merciful, and forgiving.
Something’s wrong with this picture.
By the standards with which we understand the terms, the very idea that an all-loving, all-merciful, all-compassionate God could even conceive of a place such as hell is counter-intuitive and nonsensical. You must redefine those terms in order to make sense of such a concept.
Yet, this is the prevailing concept within traditional/evangelical Christianity. God is love. God is merciful. But God will send you to roast for eternity in unimaginable torment if you don’t believe and do the right things.
It can’t be both ways. If you abide by traditional/evangelical Christian thought, then you must either acknowledge that God is not loving, not merciful, and not compassionate, by the standards with which we understand those terms, or you must acknowledge that the very concept of hell is flawed.
I personally believe that the hell doctrine is Christianity’s single biggest doctrinal disgrace. For centuries it has been used as a tool to wield power, scaring people into submitting to the will of the Church for fear of eternal punishment. It is certainly not worthy of the God we believe embodies love, mercy, and compassion, and it is not even biblical, if one understands the background against which the bible speaks of hell. Even if one makes the argument for the biblical veracity of a place called hell for sinners, such teachings would clearly fall into the category that the Episcopalian bishop, writer, and scholar John Shelby Spong would call a “sin of scripture.” It can stand proudly beside those other sins of scripture such as mandatory execution for homosexual acts, the slaughter of innocent Egyptian babies, and words of encouragement and support for beating and abusing wayward children.
I don’t personally believe in hell. I believe in a God of love, a God of compassion, and a God of mercy. I believe in forgiveness and acceptance. I don’t believe that anyone is completely guilty of whatever crimes/actions they have committed. No one is born evil, or born with a desire to do evil. We learn these things through society and culture, and usually a healthy dose of neglect, abuse, and bad influences. Even if someone is born with a mind seemingly pre-wired to criminal pathology, is it their fault they were born with such a mind? Did they ask to become a homicidal maniac, child molester, or serial killer? I believe in the concept of basic human innocence. We are born innocent, and anything that happens thereafter is a complex combination of psychological pre-wiring, nurture, and societal influence. No one can do anything other than attempt to make their way in the world with the set of parameters they have been given. Some of us get two loving parents, a nice house in suburbia, reliable cars, good schools, and positive influences. Others of us get an abusive mother, a drug-dealing father, dangerous schools, ghetto tenements to live in, and the stench of crack pipes to fall asleep to. Still others get the impression of stability in white suburbia, but grow up behind the scenes with sexually, physically, and emotionally abusive parents.
Where would you be, if you had been given scenario number two or three in the paragraph above?
I’m not suggesting I believe that crimes should go unpunished or that serial criminals should be allowed back on the streets. What I am suggesting is that when it comes down to ultimate truths and ultimate realities, we all have innocent souls. Therefore, how could anyone be worthy of a place like hell? Don’t forget – hell is not just a place of temporary punishment where you get to burn in utter agony for a few weeks in order to pay for your crimes. Hell is a place where you burn in utter agony, without dying, for all eternity! No crime/action/inaction in life could possibly justify such a punishment – especially not the crime of believing in the wrong religion, or choosing not to believe at all.
The ancient Jews did not really have any unified or structured concept of hell. The closest thing to an afterlife to the ancient Jew was the place called “Sheol,” which was more or less the underworld – the world of shadows, under the ground, where all people went when they died. It had nothing to do with eternal torment, or any sort of reward/punishment cycle.
Hell came into being along with the birth of the Christian church. If you open your bible, you won’t find any reference to hell until the New Testament. During the time of the birth of Christianity, there was a garbage and refuse dump outside of Jerusalem, called Gehenna in Greek, which was routinely on fire as the city’s waste was burned. The early Jewish Christians combined their understanding of the spiritual place called Sheol, with their knowledge of the physical place called Gehenna, to form the concept of hell. It was a way for them to makes sense of the tragedies and persecutions that they suffered, and it was a way for them to satisfy the basic human idea of reward/punishment.
Although the gospel writers (writing several generations after Jesus’s life), attributed words to Jesus that included talk of hell, most scholars do not believe the historical Jesus would have had any concept of hell as we understand it, as the concept was not developed until long after his death. If Jesus ever spoke of eternal rewards and punishments, it would have been in a metaphorical sense – in other words, to live apart from God is to doom yourself to eternal suffering through being separated from the source of your being; to live in union with God is to live in perpetual exaltation with the source of life and love. Which sounds better to you? I know I would choose the latter.
For the kingdom of God to be realized in the present, I believe Christianity must jettison outdated and immoral doctrines like the doctrine of hell. If God is all-loving, all-merciful, and all compassionate, then all human beings have innocent souls, and all are equally deserving of eternal communion with God.
1) All non-Christians will go to hell.
2) Anyone who doesn’t believe in God will go to hell.
3) People will get a chance to accept God before the final decision is made.
4) Only the most evil and unrepentant will go to hell.
5) God will have mercy on everyone.
I then asked them to choose what they would do if they were God. The same choices applied. My gut feeling was that some people would choose answers 1 or 2 in the first poll (believing that God would either send all non-Christians to hell, or at least all non-believers to hell), but that far fewer people would choose answers 1 or 2 for the second poll.
My assumptions proved true. For the first poll, two respondents believed that all non-Christians would go to hell, and one respondent believed that anyone who didn’t believe in God would go to hell. The majority, of course, chose something between answers 3, 4, and 5. Yet no one, when answering the second poll – the one about what they would do if they were God – answered choice 1 or 2.
What does this say about our conceptions of God? Could it be true that these rebellious, sinful, hopeless creatures called human beings are more merciful, forgiving, and loving than the very God who created them? If one abides by a traditional/evangelical Christian view of reality, this seems to be the only assumption one can make. We think God will send all non-believers, and maybe even all people who aren’t specifically born again Christians, to hell, yet if we were God ourselves, we would be much more lenient, merciful, and forgiving.
Something’s wrong with this picture.
By the standards with which we understand the terms, the very idea that an all-loving, all-merciful, all-compassionate God could even conceive of a place such as hell is counter-intuitive and nonsensical. You must redefine those terms in order to make sense of such a concept.
Yet, this is the prevailing concept within traditional/evangelical Christianity. God is love. God is merciful. But God will send you to roast for eternity in unimaginable torment if you don’t believe and do the right things.
It can’t be both ways. If you abide by traditional/evangelical Christian thought, then you must either acknowledge that God is not loving, not merciful, and not compassionate, by the standards with which we understand those terms, or you must acknowledge that the very concept of hell is flawed.
I personally believe that the hell doctrine is Christianity’s single biggest doctrinal disgrace. For centuries it has been used as a tool to wield power, scaring people into submitting to the will of the Church for fear of eternal punishment. It is certainly not worthy of the God we believe embodies love, mercy, and compassion, and it is not even biblical, if one understands the background against which the bible speaks of hell. Even if one makes the argument for the biblical veracity of a place called hell for sinners, such teachings would clearly fall into the category that the Episcopalian bishop, writer, and scholar John Shelby Spong would call a “sin of scripture.” It can stand proudly beside those other sins of scripture such as mandatory execution for homosexual acts, the slaughter of innocent Egyptian babies, and words of encouragement and support for beating and abusing wayward children.
I don’t personally believe in hell. I believe in a God of love, a God of compassion, and a God of mercy. I believe in forgiveness and acceptance. I don’t believe that anyone is completely guilty of whatever crimes/actions they have committed. No one is born evil, or born with a desire to do evil. We learn these things through society and culture, and usually a healthy dose of neglect, abuse, and bad influences. Even if someone is born with a mind seemingly pre-wired to criminal pathology, is it their fault they were born with such a mind? Did they ask to become a homicidal maniac, child molester, or serial killer? I believe in the concept of basic human innocence. We are born innocent, and anything that happens thereafter is a complex combination of psychological pre-wiring, nurture, and societal influence. No one can do anything other than attempt to make their way in the world with the set of parameters they have been given. Some of us get two loving parents, a nice house in suburbia, reliable cars, good schools, and positive influences. Others of us get an abusive mother, a drug-dealing father, dangerous schools, ghetto tenements to live in, and the stench of crack pipes to fall asleep to. Still others get the impression of stability in white suburbia, but grow up behind the scenes with sexually, physically, and emotionally abusive parents.
Where would you be, if you had been given scenario number two or three in the paragraph above?
I’m not suggesting I believe that crimes should go unpunished or that serial criminals should be allowed back on the streets. What I am suggesting is that when it comes down to ultimate truths and ultimate realities, we all have innocent souls. Therefore, how could anyone be worthy of a place like hell? Don’t forget – hell is not just a place of temporary punishment where you get to burn in utter agony for a few weeks in order to pay for your crimes. Hell is a place where you burn in utter agony, without dying, for all eternity! No crime/action/inaction in life could possibly justify such a punishment – especially not the crime of believing in the wrong religion, or choosing not to believe at all.
The ancient Jews did not really have any unified or structured concept of hell. The closest thing to an afterlife to the ancient Jew was the place called “Sheol,” which was more or less the underworld – the world of shadows, under the ground, where all people went when they died. It had nothing to do with eternal torment, or any sort of reward/punishment cycle.
Hell came into being along with the birth of the Christian church. If you open your bible, you won’t find any reference to hell until the New Testament. During the time of the birth of Christianity, there was a garbage and refuse dump outside of Jerusalem, called Gehenna in Greek, which was routinely on fire as the city’s waste was burned. The early Jewish Christians combined their understanding of the spiritual place called Sheol, with their knowledge of the physical place called Gehenna, to form the concept of hell. It was a way for them to makes sense of the tragedies and persecutions that they suffered, and it was a way for them to satisfy the basic human idea of reward/punishment.
Although the gospel writers (writing several generations after Jesus’s life), attributed words to Jesus that included talk of hell, most scholars do not believe the historical Jesus would have had any concept of hell as we understand it, as the concept was not developed until long after his death. If Jesus ever spoke of eternal rewards and punishments, it would have been in a metaphorical sense – in other words, to live apart from God is to doom yourself to eternal suffering through being separated from the source of your being; to live in union with God is to live in perpetual exaltation with the source of life and love. Which sounds better to you? I know I would choose the latter.
For the kingdom of God to be realized in the present, I believe Christianity must jettison outdated and immoral doctrines like the doctrine of hell. If God is all-loving, all-merciful, and all compassionate, then all human beings have innocent souls, and all are equally deserving of eternal communion with God.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Carbs Are Our Friends
The “low carb” diet craze has long since died out from its peak a few years ago, but it seems to have left a general feeling within the population that carbohydrates are bad and must be watched carefully to ensure that we are getting proper healthy nutrition.
This is an unfortunate misconception.
Our body’s cells require energy in order to function properly. Without energy, the cells would die and so would our body. For this reason, all life requires nutrition. When we eat foods, our body’s cells get energy from the nutrients within the food. There are three sources for cellular energy: carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
Carbohydrates are the first nutrients metabolized by our cells. They are the cells’ preferred source of energy. When all the carbohydrates have been burned, our cells then turn to fat. When there is no fat left, the last resort for our cells is protein. If your body is metabolizing protein for energy, you are on the verge of starving to death. This is what happens in anorexics and starvation victims.
The reason low carb diets work so well is because they function by eliminating the cells’ first choice for energy, thereby forcing the cells to metabolize fat. Obviously, when the cells metabolize fat, they are breaking the fat down and burning it off as energy. This is what makes you lose weight. In that sense, low carb diets are an efficient and appropriate way to lose weight.
However, when low carb diets become a lifestyle habit, they begin to lose their effectiveness and instead become a liability in our body’s health. This is particularly true for many type 2 diabetics who maintain low carb diets in an effort to control their blood sugar.
When we ingest carbohydrates, our digestive system breaks them down into glucose, which is a simple sugar called a monosaccharide. That glucose becomes the source of carbohydrate metabolism by the cells. Any glucose that is not metabolized is stored as glycogen in the liver, for later use. It is for this reason that many type 2 diabetics avoid carbohydrates – they don’t want that extra glucose in their bodies, since their insulin is not effective in breaking it down (that’s what defines type 2 diabetes – the increasing inability of the person’s insulin to get rid of glucose; type 1 diabetes, on the other hand, is characterized by a lack of insulin).
The problem with avoiding carbohydrates over the long term, however, is that carbohydrates are the cells’ preferred metabolic source. The cells function best when they are getting energy from carbohydrates. That’s why people who ingest sufficient amounts of carbohydrates have more energy and generally feel better. And since carbohydrates are the cells’ preferred metabolic source, the cells are healthiest when they are getting the majority of their energy from carbohydrates. When you eliminate, over the long term, the cells’ preferred choice for energy, the cells will suffer. This has far reaching implications, because healthy cells make for healthy bodies. People whose cells are continually getting energy from fat will eventually have cells that are not as healthy as those who get their energy primarily from carbohydrates. This can result in everything from early aging to the quicker and more likely onset of chronic diseases.
For diabetics, and for anyone wishing to watch their sugar intake, low carb diets are not necessarily the answer, and, more times than not, will actually be more harmful in the long run. Instead, the focus should be on exercise. If a person stays active on a daily basis and gets plenty of exercise, they can eat a normal diet of carbohydrates without any fear of increasing their sugar. This holds true for the type II diabetic as well. The reason the diabetic can have no fear of increasing their sugar is because they don’t have to be dependent on their poorly functioning insulin to break down the carbohydrate glucose. Instead, the cells will metabolize the glucose for energy, which will not only make the person’s cells more healthy in the long run, but will also make the person feel more energized and more healthy in general.
Exercise is the key. Our bodies are not biologically designed to be sedentary. We are designed for activity. And our cells work best – and therefore keep us healthier – when they are drawing energy from carbohydrate metabolism.
Whether you are a diabetic, or just someone concerned about healthy lifestyles, don’t worry so much about carbohydrates, and focus instead on staying active every day and reducing your fat intake. Then, you won’t need a low carb diet to help you lose weight, and you can ingest an appropriate amount of carbohydrates without fear of increasing your blood sugar.
If you need to shed a few pounds, low carb diets are a good way to do it. But once you have lost the weight you need to lose, end the carb counting and start eating sufficient carbohydrates, low amounts of fat, and plenty of vegetables, along with daily activity and exercise.
This is an unfortunate misconception.
Our body’s cells require energy in order to function properly. Without energy, the cells would die and so would our body. For this reason, all life requires nutrition. When we eat foods, our body’s cells get energy from the nutrients within the food. There are three sources for cellular energy: carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
Carbohydrates are the first nutrients metabolized by our cells. They are the cells’ preferred source of energy. When all the carbohydrates have been burned, our cells then turn to fat. When there is no fat left, the last resort for our cells is protein. If your body is metabolizing protein for energy, you are on the verge of starving to death. This is what happens in anorexics and starvation victims.
The reason low carb diets work so well is because they function by eliminating the cells’ first choice for energy, thereby forcing the cells to metabolize fat. Obviously, when the cells metabolize fat, they are breaking the fat down and burning it off as energy. This is what makes you lose weight. In that sense, low carb diets are an efficient and appropriate way to lose weight.
However, when low carb diets become a lifestyle habit, they begin to lose their effectiveness and instead become a liability in our body’s health. This is particularly true for many type 2 diabetics who maintain low carb diets in an effort to control their blood sugar.
When we ingest carbohydrates, our digestive system breaks them down into glucose, which is a simple sugar called a monosaccharide. That glucose becomes the source of carbohydrate metabolism by the cells. Any glucose that is not metabolized is stored as glycogen in the liver, for later use. It is for this reason that many type 2 diabetics avoid carbohydrates – they don’t want that extra glucose in their bodies, since their insulin is not effective in breaking it down (that’s what defines type 2 diabetes – the increasing inability of the person’s insulin to get rid of glucose; type 1 diabetes, on the other hand, is characterized by a lack of insulin).
The problem with avoiding carbohydrates over the long term, however, is that carbohydrates are the cells’ preferred metabolic source. The cells function best when they are getting energy from carbohydrates. That’s why people who ingest sufficient amounts of carbohydrates have more energy and generally feel better. And since carbohydrates are the cells’ preferred metabolic source, the cells are healthiest when they are getting the majority of their energy from carbohydrates. When you eliminate, over the long term, the cells’ preferred choice for energy, the cells will suffer. This has far reaching implications, because healthy cells make for healthy bodies. People whose cells are continually getting energy from fat will eventually have cells that are not as healthy as those who get their energy primarily from carbohydrates. This can result in everything from early aging to the quicker and more likely onset of chronic diseases.
For diabetics, and for anyone wishing to watch their sugar intake, low carb diets are not necessarily the answer, and, more times than not, will actually be more harmful in the long run. Instead, the focus should be on exercise. If a person stays active on a daily basis and gets plenty of exercise, they can eat a normal diet of carbohydrates without any fear of increasing their sugar. This holds true for the type II diabetic as well. The reason the diabetic can have no fear of increasing their sugar is because they don’t have to be dependent on their poorly functioning insulin to break down the carbohydrate glucose. Instead, the cells will metabolize the glucose for energy, which will not only make the person’s cells more healthy in the long run, but will also make the person feel more energized and more healthy in general.
Exercise is the key. Our bodies are not biologically designed to be sedentary. We are designed for activity. And our cells work best – and therefore keep us healthier – when they are drawing energy from carbohydrate metabolism.
Whether you are a diabetic, or just someone concerned about healthy lifestyles, don’t worry so much about carbohydrates, and focus instead on staying active every day and reducing your fat intake. Then, you won’t need a low carb diet to help you lose weight, and you can ingest an appropriate amount of carbohydrates without fear of increasing your blood sugar.
If you need to shed a few pounds, low carb diets are a good way to do it. But once you have lost the weight you need to lose, end the carb counting and start eating sufficient carbohydrates, low amounts of fat, and plenty of vegetables, along with daily activity and exercise.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Did Judas Really Betray Jesus?
Many modern biblical scholars and theologians make arguments that the Judas betrayal story in the New Testament was a later addition to the developing Jesus saga, and was not a real event in Jesus's life. To support this assertion, scholars point to several facts.
To start, no one is quite sure what the word "Iscariot" refers to. Normally, the suffix "iot" would have implied that Judas was from a placed called Iscaria. "Iot" is a suffix akin to "ian" or "ite". However, no such ancient town or village is known to have existed.
A more popular suggestion is that "Iscariot" was a reference to the Sicarii, which were a group of assassins in 1st century Judea intent on driving the Romans out of Jewish lands. In her book "Mary Called Magdalene," Margaret George abides by this theory and fictionalizes Judas as a Sicarii who is drawn in among the followers of Jesus.
The problem with this theory is that the Sicarii didn't seem to appear until about 50 C.E., 20 years after the events of Jesus's death. Judas, therefore, couldn't have been a Sicarii, unless the term was applied perjoratively to him later.
It is possible that Judas was a fictional character all together. The 12 apostles included 3 men named Judas...Judas son of James, Judas Iscariot, and Judas Thomas Didymus. Judas Thomas is more commonly known as just Thomas, and Judas the son of James (i.e. St. Jude) is also called Thaddeus, and sometimes Judas the Zealot. This last reference could imply a link with the Iscarii argument - perhaps Judas the Zealot and Judas Iscariot (the Iscarii) were the same person.
In addition to the problems of Judas's identity, there are numerous textural indications that the betrayal story was legendary in nature.
The earliest documents in the New Testament are the letters of Paul. Nowhere in Paul's letters does he ever refer to Jesus's arrest and crucifixion resulting from a betrayal, by Judas or anyone else. He never mentions Judas by name, and he never mentions any sort of betrayal story.
Furthermore, and perhaps even more significantly, Paul specifically refers to an appearance of the resurrected Jesus to "Peter and then to the 12." That's an important line, because, according to the betrayal stories, Judas killed himself after the betrayal, and thus Jesus's appearance were "to the 11" (see Matthew 28:16, Mark 16:14, Luke 24:9, and Luke 24:33 for references to "the 11). By stating that the resurrected Jesus appeared "to the 12," Paul is making it clear that he was not aware of any betrayal story, or any concept that Judas wasn't still with "the 12" when Jesus was resurrected.
Additionally, the details of the betrayal vary wildly among the gospels.
Mark, the first gospel, says Judas decided to betray Jesus. Jesus then predicts, during the Last Supper, that he will be betrayed, but doesn't say by whom. Judas then brings the soldiers to the Garden of Gesthemene and betrays Jesus with a kiss. Judas is never mentioned again by Mark.
In Matthew, the second gospel, written some 10-15 years after Mark, the writer adds in the 30 silver pieces detail. This is the only gospel to mention 30 silver pieces. Additionally, Jesus specifically calls Judas out at the Last Supper and names him as the betrayer. He then later describes Judas as being torn with remorse, giving the money back, and hanging himself. The writer says that the Jews took the money and used it to buy a potter's field, in order to bury foreigners. This, he says, fulfilled a prophecy in Jeremiah that talks about buying a potters field with 30 pieces of silver. Clearly (to my mind, anyway) Matthew added these details on his own, in an effort to argue that Jesus's life fulfilled scripture - which is something he does again and again in his gospel.
Luke, the third gospel, says that "Satan entered" Judas, causing him to betray Jesus. At the Last Supper, Jesus does a lot of talking, but does not predict any betrayal by anyone. When Judas leads the guards to Jesus, he tries to kiss Jesus, but Jesus stops him and asks him if he's betraying him with a kiss. Jesus is then arrested. Judas is never mentioned again in Luke's gospel. However, the same writer wrote Acts, and in Acts, Judas is described as going and purchasing a field, and then falling there headlong. In doing so, his body burst open and his intestines spilled out.
The final gospel, John, also states that the "devil prompted" Judas to betray Jesus. Jesus then predicts his betrayal, and names Judas specifically. In John's version, Jesus then tell Judas to go do what he has to do, and Judas leaves the gathering. Jesus then goes on to give about 4 chapters' worth of teachings, there at the table. After the supper, Judas leads the guards to Jesus, and Jesus surrenders himself without Judas doing anything -- no kiss, no nothing. Judas is not mentioned again by John.
So for details, you have the following:
- All 4 gospels agree that Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus (which is about the only thing they agree on).
- 2 gospels say Judas betrayed Jesus with a kiss. 1 gospel says Judas tried to kiss Jesus, but Jesus stopped him. 1 gospel says Jesus gave himself up willingly, and Judas doesn't even attempt to kiss him.
- 2 gospels say Jesus specifically named Judas as his betrayer at the Last Supper. 1 gospels says Jesus predicted he would be betrayed, but did not name who. 1 gospel says nothing about a prediction by Jesus.
- 3 gospels say Judas betrayed Jesus for money. 1 of those gospels goes on to specify 30 silver pieces. 1 gospel does not say anything at all about money being involved, and instead implies Judas did it because the devil made him.
- 3 gospels imply Judas remained at the Lord's Supper until they all left. 1 gospel says he got up and left after Jesus named him as the betrayer.
- 2 gospels say nothing about what happened to Judas after the betrayal. 1 gospel says Judas was torn with guilt, gave the money back, and committed suicide by hanging himself. The money he gave back was then used by the Jews to buy a potter's field. 1 gospel says nothing about Judas feeling guilty, giving the money back, or committing suicide, but instead implies that Judas used the money to buy a potter's field himself, then had an accident in the field and died a horrible death in which his body burst open.
Some apologists might argue that the varying details prove it is a real story -- eyewitnesses, after all, always have different memories (Lee Strobel argues this point in his book "The Case for Christ"). The problem with this argument is that these same apologists don't question the memories of these writers at all when recording the details of Jesus's teachings, etc. If God inspired the words of the bible - as evangelicals prolciam - then God could have gotten the details about Judas's betrayal right.
The final point scholars make is one that I find very intriguing and interesting. The argument is that Judas's very name suggests mythological and metaphorical origins for the betrayal story.
The names Jude and Judas are etymologically equivalent to the name of the Jewish nation -- Judah, or Judea. Thus, Judas, with a name representing the entire nation of the Jews, was filled with Satan and betrayed and rejected Jesus. Considering the Christian perception that the callous Jews rejected Jesus, how convenient that the betrayer of Jesus was named for the Jewish nation.
To put this point in perspective, imagine if someone in central Missouri began preaching against the oppressiveness of the American political system. He began traveling around the country with a large retinue, teaching that Americans were fat, greedy, self-centered, and spiritually empty. He spoke out against the authority of the American government. Eventually, the government began to take notice of him and decided he needed to be jailed, to stop his damaging movement. They enlisted one of his closest companions to betray him so that they could arrest him. This companion just happened to be named none other than AMERICUS. Who could be more patriotic, loyal, and representative of American values than someone named AMERICUS, and who more appropriate to betray this anti-American leader than someone named AMERICUS?
Thus, Judas's very name seems almost too convenient to assume that the betrayal stories are entirely, if at all, accurate.
As for my personal beliefs, I think Judas was probably a real person, perhaps someone who fell out of favor with the disciples after Jesus's death, and then later became a scapegoat and the subject of betrayal legends. I also wonder if his name was actually Judas, and not something else.
Friday, February 16, 2007
New Rush Album
Antlantic Records has announced that Rush's new album, Snakes & Arrows, will be released on May 1st. A single from the album, titled "Far Cry", will be released to the radio on March 19th.
A very short "teaser" of Far Cry is available on Rush's website (see the link on the left side of the page).
This 10-second teaser doesn't give you much, but it certainly allows you to hear that A) the sound quality is superb, which is important considering all the problems with sound quality on their 2002 Vapor Trails album, and B)the style of the song (and possibly the whole album) is similar to some of their older sounds - syncopated rhythms with unusual time signatures (7/8, 11/12, etc.) - and also pretty heavy. The clip, in fact, sounds quite a lot like passages in 1980's Jacob's Ladder and 1979's Hemispheres.
In interviews, and on their websites, the band members have said that the album's theme is spirituality and belief. The title, then, makes sense, since Snakes & Arrows is an ancient Hindu game charting the ups and downs of the soul's journey towards its reunion with the Great All.
This new album is particularly exciting for me for several reasons. First, many of you know that I am very interested in religion and spirituality, for both academic and religious reasons. So the content of this album should be right up my alley. Secondly, this is the first Rush studio album of new material that I have had the pleasure of "anticipating" prior to its release.
I didn't start getting really interested in Rush until about late 2001 and 2002. Their last new studio album of new material was released around that same time, but I did not buy it until probably 2003 or early 2004. By 2004, my Rush obsession was in full swing, and Rush did have a new album out that year, but it was all remake material of 1960's rock songs. So it wasn't original, new material.
So I am anticipating this new album greatly, and my appetite is even stronger now that I've had a glimpse, through that teaser clip, of what the new album is going to be like.
May 1st can't get here soon enough!
A very short "teaser" of Far Cry is available on Rush's website (see the link on the left side of the page).
This 10-second teaser doesn't give you much, but it certainly allows you to hear that A) the sound quality is superb, which is important considering all the problems with sound quality on their 2002 Vapor Trails album, and B)the style of the song (and possibly the whole album) is similar to some of their older sounds - syncopated rhythms with unusual time signatures (7/8, 11/12, etc.) - and also pretty heavy. The clip, in fact, sounds quite a lot like passages in 1980's Jacob's Ladder and 1979's Hemispheres.
In interviews, and on their websites, the band members have said that the album's theme is spirituality and belief. The title, then, makes sense, since Snakes & Arrows is an ancient Hindu game charting the ups and downs of the soul's journey towards its reunion with the Great All.
This new album is particularly exciting for me for several reasons. First, many of you know that I am very interested in religion and spirituality, for both academic and religious reasons. So the content of this album should be right up my alley. Secondly, this is the first Rush studio album of new material that I have had the pleasure of "anticipating" prior to its release.
I didn't start getting really interested in Rush until about late 2001 and 2002. Their last new studio album of new material was released around that same time, but I did not buy it until probably 2003 or early 2004. By 2004, my Rush obsession was in full swing, and Rush did have a new album out that year, but it was all remake material of 1960's rock songs. So it wasn't original, new material.
So I am anticipating this new album greatly, and my appetite is even stronger now that I've had a glimpse, through that teaser clip, of what the new album is going to be like.
May 1st can't get here soon enough!
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey
Lady Jane Grey, in a 17th century painting
Dawn broke on a London sky heavy with clouds on the morning of February 12, 1554. The city lay cloaked beneath a miasma of light drizzle, which wetted the cobblestones and kept the streets quiet and forlorn. An eastern wind blew frigid off the English Channel, rattling the bare branches of the copper beeches.*
Inside her rooms in the Tower of London, Jane Grey must have felt as cold and dreary as the weather outside her window.
The Tower of London in a 16th century sketch
Sometime in the late morning, a horse-drawn cart trundled by on the paving stones below, carrying the mortal remains of her husband, whose head had been parted from his body only moments earlier at the public execution site at Tower Hill. Earlier in the morning, she had watched him walk by her window, sobbing.
Determined not to lose her dignity, she held back her emotions as the executioners came to her room to escort her to Tower Green. On the orders of Queen Mary, she was to have a private execution – a singular honor for someone doomed to die. Her face was pale, but she was otherwise composed as she was led to the place where she would lose her head.
Tower Green - The execution spot is in the lower right hand corner
As she walked across the grass of Tower Green, staring at the scaffold which stood in the center – the same scaffold that had taken the heads of two wives of her great Uncle, Henry VIII – she must have wondered at the disturbing turn of events that had led to her arrival at such a notorious spot.
Called by a modern British historian “one of the finest female minds of the century,” Lady Jane Grey was born near Leicester at Bradgate Park in central England.
Deer in Bradgate Park
Her mother, Frances Brandon, was the granddaughter of Henry VII through his youngest daughter, making Jane a direct descendent of the founder of the Tudor dynasty.
Frances Brandon has been characterized as a strong and domineering mother who showed little affection to her children. Because of this lack of maternal love, Jane poured herself into scholarship**, mastering many languages, including Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and becoming a devoted Protestant.
In March of 1547, at the age of 9, Jane was sent to live with her great Aunt, Catherine Parr, who was the sixth and final wife of Henry VIII. Henry had just died a few months earlier, and Catherine was now a dowager queen. Queen Catherine showed Jane the maternal love that she had never received from her own mother, but it was not to last long, as Catherine died in childbirth less than two years later (she had remarried in April of 1547, only 3 months after Henry’s death).
An attempt was made to marry Jane to Edward VI, who had succeeded his father to the throne of England. Edward and Jane were the same age and were second cousins. Edward, however, was sickly and not in good health, and because of this and other personal reasons, he rejected the proposal to marry his cousin. Jane was then offered to Guildford Dudley, the son of Edward’s chief advisor, John Dudley (since Edward was only a child when he ascended to the throne, his rule was mediated by a regency council, of which John Dudley was the head). Though Jane was opposed to this marriage, she consented under pressure and Jane and Guildford were married on the Ides of May, 1553.
Edward VI, like his cousin Jane, was a Protestant. John Dudley – Jane’s new father-in-law and Edward’s Lord Protector – was also a Protestant and had grown wealthy after Henry VIII had disbanded the Catholic monasteries and distributed their income and properties to his supporters. When it became apparent, during 1553, that the sickly teenage king would not live to adulthood, Dudley led a not-so-private campaign to ensure that Edward’s older sister Mary – who was a staunch Catholic – did not ascend to the throne. Dudley, like the other Protestant nobles, knew that Mary would deconstruct the Protestant reforms made by her father and brother before her, and they feared the land they had gained when the monasteries were disbanded would be lost if Mary reestablished state-sponsored Catholicism.
Led by Dudley, this anti-Mary faction convinced the ailing Edward to name his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, as his heir. Jane had a rightful claim to the throne as a direct descendent of Henry VII, and since the 1544 Act of Succession had given Henry VIII the right to alter succession at his will***, Edward agreed to name Lady Jane as his heir, effectively bypassing his elder sisters Mary and Elizabeth by declaring that they were illegitimate****.
Despite being named in the will of the king, Lady Jane’s claim to the throne was tenuous at best. The Act of Succession had specifically named Mary as the heir to Edward should Edward produce no heirs – Jane had figured in the Act of Succession only in that her male heirs would take the throne if no other heirs were available. Furthermore, since Edward was only 15, and therefore not of the age of majority, his decree that Jane should be his heir was not viewed as legally watertight or binding.
Be that as it may, when Edward died on July 6, 1553, Jane became queen, and was proclaimed as such on July 10, 1553. She had been told of the machinations to make her Edward’s heir only one day earlier. Her response had been one of shock and feelings of insufficiency. Be that as it may, she became the first queen regent in English history*****. As was the custom of monarchs during the time between their accession and their coronation, Jane moved into secure rooms in the Tower of London, thereby laying claim to the Tower.
On her first day as queen, she discovered the grisly truth of how she was being used to enact a secret plan for power, formulated by her father-in-law, John Dudley. The Lord Treasurer brought a number of jewels, including a crown, for Jane to try on. She refused to put the crown on, still not fully believing that she was indeed the Queen of England. The Lord Treasurer, not understanding her hesitancy, encouraged her to take it, remarking offhandedly that another would be made for her husband when he was crowned king.
Jane was enraged, realizing for the first time that Dudley’s interests lay not on religious principles, but instead on the hopes that he could install his son (Jane’s husband, Guildford) as the king and successor of Edward. Jane immediately stated her intent to make her husband a duke, promising that he would never be a king. Guildford, angry and upset that she was not caving to his father’s grand plan, attempted to change her mind, but Jane refused to entertain the idea that she would defer her regency to him. He attempted to leave, but Jane ordered that he remain at the Tower with her.
Later that same evening, Jane’s accession was announced throughout London, and to the surprise and disappointment of Dudley and the other conspirators, the announcement was met with much hostility by the general public. The English people, it seemed, supported Mary – Henry VIII’s eldest daughter and the original heir presumptive before Edward’s deathbed will. The people felt (perhaps rightly so) that Jane’s claim to the throne was illegal, and many (primarily Catholics) felt resentful of the attempts by the monarchy to suppress the free practice of Catholicism in England. While Jane had the support of the nobles and the deceased king, Mary had the support of the populace.
Dudley, realizing that Mary was the only thing standing between him and the realization of his goals (he could worry later about conniving to get his son installed as king), attempted to capture and imprison Mary. In the last few days before Edward’s death, he summoned Mary to the king’s deathbed. Mary was warned, however, that it was a trap, and turned back, retreating to East Anglia. Dudley sent some of his lackeys after her, but they were unable to apprehend her.
As a result, Dudley began making preparations for battle, thinking that mustering a fighting force to forcibly remove Mary from the picture would be the only answer to his problem. He left Jane in the Tower, watched over by the regency council, which had sworn allegiance to her, and went lead his regiment to where he believed Mary was hiding.
But his plan was crumbling around him. Several prominent towns declared Mary the queen, and other towns followed suit. A regiment of ships Dudley had dispatched to cut off a possible escape route betrayed Dudley and pledged allegiance to Mary instead.
When news of this desertion reached London, the councilors sworn to protect Jane began to vacillate. Fearing they would desert her, Jane ordered the doors of the Tower locked from the outside. Additionally, Jane began sending out royal proclamations, signed “Jane the Quene,” urging the people to support her against Mary’s building rebellion.
It ultimately proved futile. The councilors, leaving the Tower under the pretext of visiting the French ambassador, pledged their support to Mary, claiming they had always been loyal to her and that Dudley had forced them to support Jane.
Thus, with popular and statutory support behind her, Mary was proclaimed queen on July 19, 1553, and Jane’s claim of accession was deemed invalid. Jane, who had been ruling for nine days from her rooms in the Tower of London, now became a prisoner in the very place that had been her regnal base.
Jane, who had been at the center of so many plans and aspirations, now found herself without an ally. With no one else to plead her case, Jane wrote to Mary herself, attempting to explain her position and apologizing for accepting the crown. “I might have taken upon me that of which I was not worthy, yet no one can ever say either that I sought it...or that I was pleased with it.”
For her part, Mary believed Jane. She saw that Jane had merely been an unwitting pawn in a grand game of conspiracy, and despite encouragement from several advisors, she resisted the idea of executing Jane for her role in the succession crisis.
Jane was kept in the Tower, but was treated well and began to feel that she was no longer in any imminent danger. Dudley and several of his cronies were executed in mid-August, and Jane felt that, since she had not been convicted and executed along with them, she must be safe from the executioner’s block. Mary, caught up in the machinations of her planned marriage to Philip of Spain, paid little attention to Jane during this time. She seems to have been content to simply keep Jane benignly under lock and key.
During this time, Jane spent much of her time reading and studying the tenets of her faith. She was as devout and pious in her Protestantism as Mary was in her Catholicism, and though she was regarded as a kind, intelligent, and caring person, she was, when it came to issues of faith, self-righteous and intolerant. She was greatly distressed, and lashed out in letters full of scathing and venomous reproach, when many Protestants began to turn back to Catholicism, including one of her childhood tutors******.
Eventually, Mary caved to the pressure to see justice done against Jane and her husband. So in November of 1553, Jane and Guildford were put on trial for their role in Dudley’s attempted usurpation. The pair pled guilty to high treason and were both sentenced to death. Most people, however, believed the sentences were a mere formality, particularly Jane’s. Mary’s principle advisor – the same one who had encouraged her to executed Jane – wrote in his weekly dispatches, following the sentencing: “As for Jane, I am told her life is safe.” In addition, Jane’s mother was a favorite of Mary, and Jane’s younger sisters were ladies-in-waiting to Mary. Most believed that Jane would soon be pardoned and allowed to return to her family.
In the end, Mary’s desire to marry Philip of Spain ultimately cost Jane her life.
When Mary’s engagement to the heir of the Holy Roman Empire was announced, it was met with great hostility from the same populace who had supported Mary’s claim to the throne. They feared England would become a pawn of the Holy Roman Empire, and they feared that foreigners (namely Spaniards) would inherit the throne when Mary died (she was in her late 30’s, and childless, when she took the throne).
As a result of the hostile feelings about Mary’s impending marriage, revolts broke out in January of 1554. Led by Thomas Wyatt, along with the support of several other prominent nobles, including Jane’s father – who had been pardoned and given leniency by Mary only months earlier – a rebellion was planned which would depose Mary and install her sister Elizabeth on the throne, while also marrying Elizabeth to one of their supporters, Edward Courtenay. Courtenay, however, caved under pressure from Mary’s advisors and betrayed the plot. The rebellion fell apart and the perpetrators were arrested.
Wyatt’s Rebellion shook Mary’s confidence. She felt she had been lenient and kind, and she was rewarded with rebellion. She was particularly shaken by the betrayal of Henry Grey, Jane’s father, whose wife and youngest daughters were frequent members of her retinue. She began to fear for her safety and her position, and she realized the only way to stem further rebellion was to deal harshly with those who threatened her throne.
Jane’s fate was sealed.
Though she took no part whatsoever in Wyatt’s Rebellion (she was, of course, still being held in the Tower of London), she had held the title of queen for nine days, and, as such, could be a future threat within Protestant rebellions against Mary’s rule.
Jane, along with her husband and the other conspirators, were sentenced to die immediately. Jane’s execution was scheduled for February 9th, 1554. Mary, however, felt a last minute pang of guilt, and so she dispatched Father John de Feckenham, dean of St. Paul’s, to minister to Jane and attempt to win Jane to the Catholic faith. Though she took an immediate liking to Father de Feckenham, she refused to renounce her strict Protestant faith.
As a result, her execution went forward on the following Monday, February 12th. Father de Feckenham offered to accompany her to the scaffold, and she agreed. Though he had failed in his attempts to convert her, he had made a strong impression on her, and she wished to have him by her side when she died.
A 19th century artist's rendering of Jane's execution
Standing by the scaffold at Tower Green, under a leaden winter sky, Jane Grey addressed the small crowd, admitting to treason but insisting upon her moral innocence. She then recited the 51st Psalm.
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.”
When she was finished, she thanked Father de Feckenham for his kindness, and asked the executioner to give her a quick death. Then she turned to the execution block and, with her own hand, placed a blindfold around her eyes. She acted too quickly, however, and stumbled, unable to find the execution block.
“What shall I do? Where is it?” she is reputed to have said.
Father de Feckenham stepped forward, gently guiding her to the spot. She stretched her body out, lay her head with dignity upon the block, and awaited the falling of the axe.
The Chapel of St. Peter in Chains, which faces Tower Green, and where Jane is buried alongside her husband
No contemporary paintings of Lady Jane Grey are known to exist. However, a painting that has been hanging for years inside a home in England is now believed to be a contemporary portrait of Lady Jane. Read about it here.
Many thanks to EnglishHistory.net and Wikipedia for much of the information in this article.
* Sadly, no weather reports of February 12, 1554 exist (to my knowledge), so this meteorological description is based on traditional February London weather patterns.
** In a letter to her tutor, Roger Ascham, in 1550, Jane wrote: “...whatsoever I do else but learning is full of grief, trouble, fear and wholly misliking to me.”
*** The 1544 Act of Succession specifically named Edward as Henry’s heir. If Edward didn’t produce any heirs, then the throne was to pass to Henry’s eldest daughter, Mary and her male descendents. If Mary was dead by then, or did not have any male heirs, then the throne was to pass to Henry’s second daughter, Elizabeth and her male descendents. In the event of Elizabeth’s death without a male heir, succession would fall to the male heirs of Frances Brandon (Lady Jane’s mother). If Frances Brandon had no male heirs, then succession would pass to Lady Jane’s male heirs. There were clauses in the law, however, which more or less gave Henry the right to change any of it at his whim. By naming Jane as his heir, Edward attempted to apply these clauses to his own kingly rights.
**** Mary and Elizabeth had both been declared illegitimate, and stripped of their succession rights, by acts of Parliament in the 1530’s, but the aforementioned 1544 Act of Succession re-established them as rightful heirs of the throne; however, their official illegitimacy was never rescinded, and Edward used this to support the naming of Jane as his heir.
***** Henry II, who ruled during the first half of the 1100’s, died without a male heir and had named his eldest daughter, Matilda as his heir presumptive. However, Henry’s nephew, Stephen, usurped the throne upon Henry’s death, plunging England into civil war. Stephen ultimately prevailed over Matilda, signing a treaty in which he named Matilda’s son as his heir. There was, however, a period of about nine months, during the civil war, when Stephen was captured and Matilda claimed the throne and moved into the palace. After Stephen was released, he took the throne back from Matilda. Since Matilda was never officially proclaimed queen by the nobles, and since she was never crowned, she is not considered an official monarch of England.
****** The tutor in question was a certain Dr. Harding, to whom Jane wrote: “Oh wretched and unhappy man, what art thou but dust and ashes? And wilt thou resist thy Maker that fashioned thee and framed thee? Wilt thou refuse the true God, and worship the invention of man, the golden calf, the whore of Babylon, the Romish religion, the abominable idol, the most wicked mass?” Additionally, John Dudley, prior to his execution, had also renounced his Protestant faith, perhaps in an effort to charm Mary into sparing his life. It didn’t work. Dudley took the sacraments and was welcomed into the Catholic faith, and then lost his head the next morning.
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