The End of an Error

It's 12:27 on Tuesday, January 20th, 2009. In just a little less than 12 hours, the presidency of George W. Bush will come to an end.

I did not come up with the idea for making a blog post about the end of Bush's presidency until about two minutes ago. So what I will say here is simply off the cuff, a collection of thoughts about the last 8 years.

During the presidential election year of 2000, M and I were married but still childless, living in a 2-room Residential Director apartment inside a fraternity house at our alma mater. M was finishing her second degree and working part time, and I was working full time in middle management and moonlighting as the RD for the fraternity that had been the rival of my own fraternity while in college.

Having long since discarded the more conservative leanings of my teenage years, I was a strong supporter of Al Gore. I recognized that Gore was not the best presidential candidate in history, but I felt that he was adequate for the job because of his intelligence and experience.

During the primary season, I had hoped to see John McCain pull out a victory. I believe that if McCain had won the nomination that year, I would likely have voted for him. I felt that McCain was clearly the better choice for Republicans, even though I was not myself a Republican.

I was dismayed when the Republicans chose Bush to be their candidate. My parents live in Texas, so I knew a little bit about W. I knew, through the lens of my parents, about what he had done as governor of Texas, and I more or less thought he was a clown, puppet, and fool.

I felt that he did not have the qualifications to be president. I felt that he was an overprivileged little jerk who had ridden his Daddy's coat tails his entire life. I felt that he was, at best, of average intelligence and that he came off like a remarkably stupid idiot when speaking. Practically every business venture he had tried during his adulthood had failed, and I believed this was a fairly good sign for how a Bush presidency would pan out. I felt like if Bush won that year, it would signal a major victory for an increasingly powerful extreme right wing that had spent the entire 8 years of Clinton's presidency poisoning the minds of Americans against "liberal" politics.

I remember on election night in 2000 feeling very nervous. I remember watching the numbers come through in that little living room inside our RD apartment. At first, the numbers were good for Gore. Major swing states were called for Gore, and at one point I remember talking to my mother on the phone and rejoicing because Gore was evidently going to win.

Then everything fell apart. They took Florida away from Gore and returned it to "too close to call" status. By the end of the evening, it was apparent that Bush had won, even though Gore was evidently going to end up with more total votes.

I was surprised the following morning to discover that the election was not yet over. Like everyone else, I watched and wondered and debated during the next few weeks, anxious to see how it was all going to turn out, and hoping beyond hope that somehow Gore would get the votes he needed in the recounts in Florida. I hoped, at the very least, that perhaps a revote would be called in Florida, since there were so many questions about "hanging chads" and confusing voter cards.

Then the Supreme Court, in a vote split along ideological lines, put an end to the recounts and declared Bush the winner. This crushing blow was bad enough, but it was made even worse by the fact that the Supreme Court did not appear to even have the constitutional or legal authority to do such a thing. But who are you going to appeal to when it involves the Supreme Court itself? God?

I can't honestly remember if I was "supportive" of Bush in the early days of his presidency or not. I can't remember if I was saying that I would give him a chance and support him until he screwed up (like some Republicans are saying now about Obama), or if I was pretty much feeling derisive and resentful right from the start.

I remember watching the inauguration and realizing that for good or bad, it was an important day in American history - as is any inaguration of a new president. I remember specifically feeling sad to see Clinton go, and I think I might even have shed a tear during his final speech, which he gave at an airport or someplace later that afternoon/evening. I remember the anchorman on TV remarking about how America's peaceful "transfer of power" should not be taken lightly, because many other countries don't have such peaceful transfers. I also remember the anchorman saying that it was customary for the outgoing president to leave a note for the incoming president on the oval office desk.

Whether I was initially supportive of Bush in the name of unity or not, I know that I very quickly came to regard his presidency as a shambles, a sham, and a travesty. When he cut taxes right away and gave everyone a nice little "rebate," I felt that he was simply trying to buy support. I also recognized that the measly 300 bucks I had in my hand didn't compare on any level to the kinds of tax cuts wealthy people and big corporations were getting.

After 9/11, I experienced the only time during Bush's presidency where I had "nice" feelings towards him. If I had been polled in the first month after 9/11, I probably would have said I approved of how he was running the country. But it did not take long for me to recognize that he was going to exploit people's fear and outrage for his own political ends. By the end of October at the very latest, I was recognizing that bad things were on the horizon.

I opposed Bush's war from the start. I recognized that his stories about Weapons of Mass Destruction were a lie and a sham. The name itself was such an obvious propoganda creation that it was difficult for me to believe that otherwise educated Americans couldn't see through it. The U.N. weapons inspectors inside Iraq insisted there was no evidence that the Iraqis were making these WMD's. The entire world was satisified with this - but Bush and his cronies pushed forward anyway.

I watched with growing disillusion as Bush drummed up support for what I already believed was an immoral war. This was made all the more worse because so much of the world was patently opposed to our actions, and I recognized that we were making enemies and that Bush was doing incredible harm to America's reputation. As far as the world stage was concerned, I felt embarassed.

The war, of course, wasn't the only thing that I found distressing about Bush. I watched as he loosened environmental policies, promising instead - you guessed it - tax cuts (yay!) - for companies that voluntarily cleaned up their pollution. I watched as Bush antagonized Iran and North Korea with his Texas cowboy slang. I watched as Bush backed out of the Kyoto Treaty, a longstanding environmental treaty that every developed country on earth was a part of. I watched as Bush kowtowed to the religious right and banned stem cell research, effectively putting the U.S. years behind the rest of the world in one of the most important sciences in the modern world. I watched as Bush maneveuered the country closer and closer to removing the rights of a woman to choose what to do with her own body.

By 2004, I was desperate to see Bush replaced with a Democrat - some balance in Washington after 4 years of unilateral Republican/Conservative rule. I strongly supported John Kerry, feeling that he was several steps above Al Gore, and that he was a great choice for president. I still didn't feel like Kerry was the absolute "best candidate ever," but I felt that he was above Gore, and head and shoulders above Bush - who had already proved that he wasn't competent to do the job. Up to that time, I routinely heard Bush supporters talk about how "awful" things would have been if Gore had won. It was a way, I felt, that they made themselves feel better about Bush's less than stellar record. But regardless of speculation about Gore, I felt that Kerry was clearly the better choice, and Bush had demonstrated for everyone to see that he was a failure as a president.

But it was not to be. Kerry did not run a particularly stellar campaign, and Bush ended up winning more votes than he had in 2000 - which at the time totally shocked me. I couldn't believe that ANY Democrat who voted for Gore in 2000 would have voted for Bush in 2004, and I felt that at least some Republicans would switch to Kerry. But that's not how it turned out.

By that 2004 election, I was divorced from M and living by myself in a grungy little apartment. I don't actually remember watching the election results in 2004, the way I remember watching in 2000, although I'm sure I did. I suppose it was probably obvious fairly early on that Bush was going to win, so I turned it off. I do remember getting up the following morning and checking the TV to make sure, and feeling that sense of hopeless dread when it was confirmed for me that Bush had won a second term.

That evening, after getting home from work, I wrote the following poem:

the aftermath

november 4th, 2004

i woke up in the middle
of the night
and it was raining.
i let my dog out,
standing before the
sliding glass door
in my boxer shorts.
it was cold
and the rain dripped from
the doorframe.

by dawn, the rain had ended,
but it was chilly
and a fierce wind blew out of the east.

a heavy shelf of dark clouds
hung overhead,
and in the distance, white-peaked
cumulonimbus piled on the horizon
like snow-covered mountains.

everything was wet
and the trees were spindly and bare.
dead leaves, clumped and muddy,
clung together in gutters,
as though hiding from the cold…

or something else.

morning traffic went on as normal,
and businesses opened and
fast food restaurants served their morning coffees.

but you could see the difference
in the weather.
nature knew,
even if the two-legged creatures who ruled her
remained oblivious.

they didn’t seem to understand,
couldn’t see what they’d done,
how they’d poisoned their own futures.

but nature knew.
she understood the display of
hubris reinforced by ignorance,
knew what a dangerous combination it was.

and she was in mourning.

I definitely remember feeling a legitimate feeling of hopelessness that day. I had hoped for so long that things would change, and instead the American people simply handed Bush their seal of approval. I felt far more upset by the resuls of the 2004 election than I did by the results of the 2000 election. The 2000 election, for me, was a choice between the lesser of two evils. I felt that Gore was clearly the lesser of those two evils, but I was able to see that neither candidate was particularly excellent. However, in 2004, we had 4 years of substantial proof that Bush was a failure. The fact that Kerry lost, for me, was a sad and depressing commentary not on the inadequacy of Kerry or the Democrats, but on the American public for re-electing a president who had proven that he was a profound disaster.

Well, four more years passed. The rich got richer and the poor seemed to get poorer. The economy worsened, America's reputation on the national stage was in shambles, and the war - which Bush said was over a month after the initial invasion - dragged on and more and more soldiers kept dying.

I got interested very early on in the possibilities for the 2008 election (for obvious reasons), and I felt more passionately for Obama than I had for any presidential candidate in my life. I literally felt pent-up with anxiety throughout the election season, wondering if we would take four more years of the same failed policies, or if America would finally wake up. The day Obama was elected was one of the most exciting days of my life.

It's now 1:27 - exactly 1 hour since I started writing. Bush has less than 11 hours left in office.

It has been nice, in the last few weeks, to see Bush actually act like a real person in several interviews. He has been a puppet on a string for the last 8 years, and I think we've seen more of the real George W. Bush in the last few weeks than we've ever seen before. I was surprised to hear him admit that he is not a bible literalist a few weeks back. He sure did do a lot to make those bible literalists happy during his presidency though. One might say he spent 8 years sucking their proverbial dicks.

It was also nice to hear him admit a few mistakes. I recall specifically during the 2004 election when he was asked a similar question. "What mistakes do you think you've made in your first term?" He dodged the question and responded with something like: "Well, I don't know, I'd have to think about that. I'm sure you news people could think of some. I'm sure I've probably made a few mistakes, but I can't really think of anything right now." I just remember thinking to myself that if he had actually had the balls to admit a mistake or two, I might have gained an ounce of respect for him. Instead, he just went deeper into the realms of uselessness. Honesty, integrity, openness, and unity were never part of the Bush administration's agenda. So it was nice to hear him finally admit to a few mistakes, but the honesty came 8 years too late.

Bush has said that he believes history will vindicate him. He believes the historians will remember his presidency favorably. Well, of course he's going to say that - what else would he say? "Yeah, historians will pretty much rank me down there with Andrew Johnson and Warren Harding." The fact that he even has to make remarks about how historians will view his presidency is pretty powerful evidence of just how much his legacy is in jeopardy.

I believe historians will not look favorably upon Bush's presidency. I believe he will get credit for toppling a sadistic dictator in Sadam Hussein, but I think that his invasion of Iraq will be seen as an abuse of power that was carried out with lies and unfounded propoganda, exploiting people's fear, outrage, and suffering after 9/11.

I believe his tacticts in the "war on terror" will cause historians to remember him as a president who felt that he was above the constitution and that the "means justified the ends."

I believe his poor response to Katrina will be seen as evidence of poor leadership. I believe he will be remembered as a president who held America back from technological advancement in the field of genetic research - a feild that promises to change the world in the next century.

I believe he will be remembered for flouting science's warnings about pollution, global warming, and the environment, and I believe he will be blamed for not doing enough to stress the need for alternative fuel sources, focusing instead on drilling in national parks.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, I believe Bush will be compared to Herbert Hoover in regards to leading our country into a severe economic recession, bording on outright depression. I believe that blame will be put on his shoulders for failure of oversight, for continuing his predecessors policies of deregulation despite the strong economic indicators saying things needed to be changed. His obsession with war and the "war on terror" will be seen has having blinded him to what was going on in his own backyard. I believe Bush's connection to this economic recession will be remembered even more strongly if Obama succeeds in bringing the country back into prosperity.

Perhaps more than anything else, I believe Bush will be remembered as a president without vision, a president who was always reactive instead of proactive, a president without the leadership ability or charisma to unify America during difficult years, a president who made difficult years remarkably more difficult with misguided policies that served the elite at the expense of the average.

Bush says history will remember him well. He apparently cannot even understand why his presidency is such an abysmal failure. If he can't even understand that - or be honest enough to admit it - then is it any wonder that he failed in the first place?

Musings from the Operating Room

This week at my clinical site, I got to run the C-Arm in the operating room for the first time. Other than seeing occasional surgeries on TV, I had never actually witnessed one myself.

I suppose my first impression was that surgeons really are just butchers. There is a lot of blood everywhere - all over their aprons and gloves, dripping all over the floor, soaked up by surgical towels.

Furthermore, when they are installing hardware to repair broken bones, they are literally using carpenter's tools. Drills, hammers, rods, nails, and screws. I don't mean specially-designed surgery screws, for instance. I mean actual screws that differ from the screws you use to hang a picture only in that they have been sterlized in an autoclave. These are screwed into place with screwdrivers with specially-modified handles.

Additionally, I always had the impression that surgery was very gentle and careful. You see shows on TV with neurosurgeons using computer-guided robots to carefully and precisely go into veins and arteries - very sensitive procedures where a slip of even 1 centimeter might mean catastrophic results.

In regular old surgery, however, it's not like that. They are standing with legs apart for good support, and hammering away with big strokes at rods that are being placed inside a bone. They are opening the flesh and then straining to hold it back with clamps and other wedge devices, exposing all the blood and gore and tissue beneath. It's not unlike watching a butcher cut up a rump roast.

Another thing about surgery is that most people think of what surgery looks like, but they rarely think about what it smells like. The smells were sometimes very bothersome. It literally smelled sometimes like a slaughterhouse. When they cauterize bleeding vessels, you get the pungent whiff of burned flesh.

Finally, if anyone has any delusions about dignity during their own surgery, they can forget them. During the procedure itself, only the area being worked on is exposed. But before and after the procedure, the person - still asleep - is literally just laying there buck naked, everything showing, being turned over and moved and oriented like a corpse. Tubes are in their mouth and nose, and their eyes are taped shut and they are drooling and their lips are all swollen and hanging open, and they essentially look like a vegetable in a loony ward, or a dead person. I saw them insert a catheter into a 15-year old boy's penis, and the catheter was about as thick as the shaft of a pen - maybe thicker. WAY thicker than what you'd expect could fit into that opening. Another person was having a hip fracture repaired, and he was laying on his stomach, buck naked, with a sanitary cloth under his butt to catch any fecal matter that might come out, and someone was literally perched over top of him on the table shaving the hair on his butt and back.

All told, I saw five procedures this week. The first day was the aforementioned 15-year old boy, who was having a pretty serious elbow fracture repaired. I walked into the room and saw nothing but an arm protruding from under the sterilized sheets, completely laid open from mid-triceps to mid-forearm. I could see one of the broken bones - a sharp peice from the bottom of the humerus - jutting out like a spear head. I could also see the base of the humerus, which is essentially like a spool of thread, that the elbow rotates against. It was cracked as well. There was very little blood because they had a tourniquet on his arm to keep all the blood above his shoulder. So the arm was white and limp and wrinkled and orange from antiseptic, and the doctors were busy putting in screws and plates. When they finished, I watched them sew up the opening.

Later that day, I was in the room for a broken hip - this was the aforementioned butt hair patient. After they started the surgery, only his left butt cheek and upper thigh were visible, and they basically opened him up all along that portion of his body, then held the tissue back with tools that looked like door wreath hangers. There was one person there - perhaps a med school student - whose only job was to hold these in place and keep the opening nice and wide and gaping.

The following day I saw two cases where patients were getting rods and screws placed to fix broken legs, and a third case where they were inserting a "portocath" into a woman's heart. She was awake for the procedure.

I was able to do a lot with the C-Arm, positioning it where the doctor wanted and then taking spot films. They use the C-Arm - which is fluoroscopic (meaning, sort of like a "video" X-ray...or real time X-ray) - to see where the screws and rods are that they are putting in. So we took a lot of spot films as they determined exactly where they wanted to drill, hammer, and screw. The blood was so thick on the floor of one of the femur patients in the spot where it was dripping that it had the consistency of jello.

When I wasn't in the O.R. this week, I did a bunch of portable X-rays on inpatients there at the hospital. These are difficult because you are X-raying people in their beds inside their rooms, using a portable X-ray machine. Depending on how sick they are, you usually have to lift them and turn them and orient them to get the picture, and they usually have tons of IV's and other tubes and wires all over them, which are easy to pull out if you aren't careful. We did a number of people in the various ICU wards, including one man in the burn unit who was so badly burned across his torso that he looked like he was rotting. We did another guy who had just been moved from his room down to the ICU because he had coded (meaning he started dying and they revived him), and so we had to go down to the ICU to do his picture there. He had severe emphysema and other lung problems, and was gasping for breath so hard that I could see the entire outline of his sternum and ribs beneath his chest each time he gasped for breath. I could even clearly see his xiphoid process, which is the very lowest tip of the sternum and which is even hard to feel on a patient, much less see. I thought he was literally going to die right there on the table.

So it's been an interesting week, and while its disturbing and depressing, it's also something new and exciting for me. I really think I would enjoy working for a big city hospital like this, a level 1 trauma center. And I haven't even been to the E.R. yet.

I was glad that the surgeries didn't bother me. I never got queasy or woozy or anything, and I was able to watch and even get pretty close to see what was going on, without having any problem. Because the patients is completely covered during the procedure, and because the skin is white and wrinkled and orangish with antiseptic, its almost hard to imagine that it's a real human being. It looks more like a rump roast in the Kroger meat market. It doesn't look human. The only thing that really bothered me was the aforementioned smell. You have a mask on, but it doesn't keep the smell away, and in fact it sort of traps it in front of your nose and its hard to get away from it.

Despite not being physically bothered by the surgeries, I think I was psychologically bothered, even though I didn't realize it at first. The reason for this is that last night, after my third day, I had really bizarre, violent, gory, bloody dreams. I woke up feeling very disturbed and with the recognition that the dreams had occurred as a result of being in those O.R. rooms. At the time, when I was still groggy with sleep, I actually thought to myself that I didn't want to go back there again. I don't feel that way now though.

I'm scheduled to be on another week of O.R. rotations, and then 2 weeks of E.R. rotations. My final week there will just be on the floor, doing fluoro exams and portables.

Back to the Grind

My month-long vacation (which wasn't really a vacation since I worked the whole time) is just about over. School starts up again on Monday, and this is going to be a difficult quarter because I have class from 10-2 on Monday and Friday, and then clinicals all day Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. For the past few quarters, I've had the 3-day a week clinicals, but only had class for 2 hours on Mondays only. So I'm picking up an additional 6 hours per week of class time, which also results in a proportional increase in studying time. Also, from what I understand, the classes I have this quarter are going to be difficult and require a lot of reading (Pathophysiology and Quality Assurance).

We spent Christmas at the in-laws, and then we just got back Saturday morning from the Lake, where we spent New Year's with M's sister and her family. We had a good time, and it was nice being down there all week with no one else around. The Lake isn't a popular place in the winter, and the resort where M's parents have their lake house was empty and quiet. We took a trip on Thursday out to Cumberland Falls, a place I had never been before. It was beautiful.

Cumberland Falls

That's not a picture I took; I found it on the Internet. But it gives a good view of the falls. The water flow was actually considerably heavier when we were there than what it is in this picture.

Cumberland Falls is apparently the only spot in the Western Hemisphere that produces a Lunar Rainbow - or what is more commonly called a "moonbow." On clear nights, particularly in the fall, when there is a full moon, it causes a rainbow to form. The rainbow colors are there, but you usually can't see them, so it look instead like a white or silvery rainbow.

Anyway...we had a nice time down there. Got back Saturday morning and I had to work Saturday evening. I also work on Sunday, and then - as I said - back to the grind of school on Monday. So my "time off" is essentially done - I don't know when I'll have an honest-to-God day off again.

I've been giving some thought to possibly eventually entering a Physician Assistant master's program. If I did it, it wouldn't be for a couple of years - obviously I want to finish my X-ray program, and work for a while in the field, before I make any final decisions. But I've been looking at P.A. programs, and I think I would enjoy it and be able to do well. P.A.'s, of course, are a step below doctors, and they work with doctors, usually doing the more routine things, thereby allowing the doctors to focus on the more difficult patients/procedures. I've worked with several P.A. Radiologists, and I think I would enjoy doing that - they do a lot of fluoro examinations, and they read X-rays etc. The pay is also really good - according to the Department of Labor, the average 1st year P.A. makes 70K per year, and the top 10% of P.A.'s make over 100K.

I've looked into a program in Kettering, OH, which is near Dayton. It's a Master's Degree program, and takes two years - you basically do a year of classes, then a year of rotations - not unlike what medical school students do, with required rotations and then "elective" rotations so you can get experience in whatever field of medicine you are interested in. I would have to take about 3 semesters' worth of prerequisite classes first, however, because my degree is in History, not one of the sciences. So it would probably take me about 3 years, all together.

So anyway...maybe 4 or 5 years down the road. I suppose it will depend on how much I like the medical field once I am out there working, how much I'm making as a radiographer, how much opportunity I have for advancement wherever I'm working, how my writing is panning out, etc., etc.

I haven't forgotten that I'm a fiction writer, by the way. I do still dream of writing novels and publishing books and writing for a living. I just haven't written any fiction in about two years. I knew that's what would happen when I went back to school - which is why I didn't do it until after I was 30. That's also why I say that my writing aspirations will play a role in deciding whether or not to go back to school AGAIN in 4 or 5 years.

I have a file on my computer with a list of about 10 book ideas, some of which predate starting school, and some that I've developed in the last few years. I even have rough outlines on a couple of them. So I have plenty of material to work with once I get back to having a normal lifestyle again. Of course, with all my loan debt, I'm going to have to work a lot of overtime when I get out of school, and possibly even have to get a second job somewhere - so it's not like I'm going to graduate and suddenly go back to working 40 hours a week again, and having the rest of the time to myself (for writing) and my family.

The important thing is that it is now 2009, that seemingly long-awaited year that I finally graduate. Granted, it won't happen until December, but it at least feels nice that it's finally 2009. 2009 seemed like a very long time in the future when I was starting this program in 2006.

I just finished the book The Last Week, written by scholars Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, discussing the story of the final week of Jesus' life as depicted in the Gospel of Mark. It's a fascinating exegesis (interpretation) of that text, and I highly recommend it. It's written for the average reader, and interprets the text within its own context, meaning it's not about any attempts at a historical reconstruction or proving that this story or that story is true or not true. It's simply a look - almost a sermon, if you will - about what Mark is saying about Jesus' last week on earth. Very, very enlightening. I would even say inspiring.

We're having a middle-of-the-night thunderstorm in January. Very odd. There's probably a poem in there somewhere, but I'm not sure I'm up to it.

2008 Reading List

Here is my reading list for 2008. I only read 31 books this year, which is 10 less than last year, and the least I've read since at least 2004 (records prior to 2005 were lost in a computer crash in 2005).

The reason for this is a combination of working and going to school so much, stress and busyness around the house, and probably the fact that I've been watching more TV than I normally have in the past. The DVR is affecting my reading time!

Since January 1 of 2005, I have read exactly 165 books. More than 40 of them have been non-fiction, the vast majority of which have been on religious studies. The rest have been novels and a few short story collections. That's an average of 41 books per year, or 1 book every 9 days.

The Alexandria Link – Steve Berry…1/20
This might be the last Steve Berry book I read, at least for a while. Berry is like so many other modern thriller writers - very formulaic plots, predictable outcomes, and recurring characters that fail to provide that warm, familiar feeling that any recurring character should give. Again, like so many other thriller writers in this post-Da Vinci Code world, Berry's plots all have to center on some religious mystery that threatens the very fabric of society, and his books have simply become too formulaic for my tastes. Another of my favorite writers, James Rollins, has sadly become largely the same way. I think part of it is not necessarily that they aren't writing good books anymore, but more that I am losing interest in this sort of predictable genre fiction.

A History of God – Karen Armstrong…2/4
A fantastic, albeit dense and at times dry, book discussing the way God has been indentified with and worshipped throughout the millenia, told through the lenses of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Not for the average reader, but a very good volume for someone with a strong interest in the history of religion.

There Is A God – Antony Flew…2/10
A book that really made me sad. Flew is nearly 90 years old, and made a name for himself as a famous Oxford atheist philosopher back in the 1940's, 50's, and 60's. He took part in a number of famous debates with C.S. Lewis there at Oxford during that time. Now in extreme old age and clearly not as intellectually sharp as he once was, he has been preyed upon and exploited by the same faction of the religious right that has given us the rebranded Judeo-Christian Creationism now called "Intelligent Design." Essentially, since the 1980's (when Flew retired), this faction - which includes prominent conservative biblical scholar Gary Habermas of Liberty University - has been attempting to persuade Flew that there is evidence of "design" in the universe. Now nearly 90, Flew has finally relented to their persuasion and has written this book saying that he has not changed his mind about personal gods or an afterlife (he still denies both), but has changed his mind about a designer of the universe. He has basically "converted" to a sort of Enlightenment-era Deism.

The disturbing thing to me is not that he has changed his mind. It is the very obvious exploitation of a famous atheist who is now in old age and clearly not at the top of his intellectual game. This religious faction has been dogging Flew since his retirement, having zeroed in on him as a possible famous "convert" because his approach to atheism was always what might be called "weak atheism" - that is, he was an atheist simply because there was no evidence to make him believe otherwise - not because he had any specific problem with religious beliefs in general.

So they exploited him in old age, and now they have their "poster boy" for conversion from atheism to belief in a designer. And naturally they have played it for all its worth - you can find articles about it all over the Internet, it was in major newspapers and magazines in England, and of course Flew published this book outlining the reasons for his change of heart. The really disturbing thing is that after the book was published, Flew admitted that he did not write it, but rather it was written by a ghostwriter - and that ghostwriter was, of course, one of the primary people in the group that spent 20 years trying to get him to change his mind. And when interviewed by a British reporter after the publication, Flew actually contradicted several of the things that were said in the book, and gave no indication - even when asked - that he realized he had contradicted himself. While he asserted that he "read and approved" everything that this ghostwriter wrote, it is clear that this simply is not true, and his inability to remember and articulate clearly was strong evidence of just how deep the exploitation of this unfortunate man has gone.

The whole thing simply reasserted my belief that the religious right is neither religious, nor right.

And for what it's worth, the arguments in the book were not convincing, and were in fact often confusing, and I did not find myself leaning toward "design" after having read it - and I read it in its entirety before I knew any of the facts listed above.

The God Delusion – Richard Dawkins…3/1
This was a surprisngly calm and reasonable book outlining Dawkins' belief that religion and theism is bad for humanity. While I disagreed with his ultimate conclusions, he provided well-written arguments, devestating logic, and was also surprisingly witty.

The Wheel of Darkness – Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child…3/5
Despite my disilllusion with the aforementioned Steve Berry and James Rollins, Preston and Child (who have co-authored over a dozen novels) are still among my favorites. Unlike so many others, they have never really sold out to the post-Da Vinci Code hysteria. They are still very original and very good.

The Quest – Wilbur Smith…3/19
Book 4 in Smith's Ancient Egyptian series. Another really good one, though he is getting a bit "out there" with the ancient warlock thing. It almost read like Fantasy at times.

Trojan Odyssey – Clive Cussler…3/30
Formulaic as they come - as are all of Cussler's books - but Dirk Pitt is one of the best recurring characters in all of literary history. It's hard not to like Cussler, even if his plots are all identical and over-the-top.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – J.K. Rowling…4/4

Jesus for the Non-Religious – John Shelby Spong…4/12

Eagle in the Sky – Wilbur Smith…4/13

Misquoting Jesus – Bart Ehrman…4/16
A must-read for any Christian, in my opinion. This book delves into the academic field of "higher textual criticism," but Ehrman's style is very easy to read and understand. It is written for a mainstream audience. He basically discusses the textual and translational problems with our modern Bibles - the way that scribal errors over the centuries have left a lot of problem-areas in our Bibles, areas where we either know the words/passages are not original to the text, or we have no way of knowing for certain which version is original and which is not. A real eye-opener for anyone claiming the Bible is infallible. Even if it were infallible, the humans who have copied and translated it over the centuries are not, so it doesn't really matter. We know for a fact there are textual errors, additions, and omissions.

Coming Up For Air – George Orwell…4/23
This was the 5th or 6th time through this Orwell classic. Still one of my absolute favorites of Orwell. Written in 1938 and eerily prophetic about the coming war with Germany.

London – Edward Rutherfurd…5/17
A must-read for any anglophile. A very long novel, but very interesting and never boring. It fictionalizes the entire history of London, going all the way back to the Roman days.

Sphere – Michael Crichton…5/20

Eaters of the Dead – Michael Crichton…5/22
I was sorry to hear a few weeks ago that Michael Crichton died, but I am not sorry that he won't be publishing anymore neo-con tripe. I still enjoy his older books like these two, however.

Biggles of 266 – W.E. Johns…5/25
A book I've had on my shelf for a number of years. It's one of the old "dime store novels" glorifying the figher aces of World War I, published originally in the 1930's by a British writer who was a former WWI pilot. It was a series that was very populuar with boys, particularly in England, throughout the 30's, 40's, and 50's.

Under the Guns of the Red Baron – Norman Franks, et al…5/29
It took me longer to read and complete this book than any other book I've ever read. It's a coffee-table style book outlining each of the victories of the Red Baron, including biographies and pictures of his victims (where the information was available), as well as detailed descriptions of the combat and what was going on in the skies over Europe that day, and a transcript of each of Richthofen's own combat reports. I got this book about 9 or 10 years ago, and probably started reading it at that time. Since then, I have slowly read a page here and there over the years, and finally finished it off this year.

Start Where You Are – Pema Chodron…6/6
A Buddhist philosophy book. I saw Chodron in an interview and really liked her (she's an American Buddhist nun who entered the convent after a mid-life crisis and a nasty divorce), but I was a bit disappointed with the book. It was dry.

The Autobiography of the Red Baron – Manfred von Richthofen…6/13
Written by The Man himself, and finished just a few months before his death in combat. A very interesting look inside the mind of the greatest aerial pilot in history.

The Resurrection of Jesus – Robert B. Stewart…7/21
This was a transcript of a debate on the resurrection of Jesus between scholars N.T. Wright and J.D. Crossan. It also included a number of essays by various prominent biblical scholars from across the theological spectrum. The essays were very much academically-oriented, and this book would not be of interest to anyone who wasn't seriously interested in the academic side of biblical scholarship. Even with as much lay experience as I have in this field, I found some of the essays to be beyond my comprehension.

America (the Book) – Jon Stewart…7/27
A hilarious coffee-table book by Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, giving a satirical and laugh-out-loud look at the history of the U.S. Literally the funniest book I have ever read.

Great American Short Stories – Corinne Demas…7/31

Akhenaten: The Heretic King – Donald B. Redford…8/6
Another book that has been on my shelf for years. This one may actually hold the record for the longest time on my shelf before I read it. M got this for me for Christmas 1997, our first married Christmas.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin – Harriet Beecher Stowe…9/25
A friend of mine encouraged me to read this, so I borrowed the book and followed her advice. It was really interesting to see firsthand the "debate" that took place in the decades prior to the civil war about slavery. To our modern sensibilities it is overly sentimental, overly religious, and even racist, but it was without question the most important (not to mention best selling) American book of the 19th century. The racist aspects of it come from Stowe's asides where she - as the narrator - sort of steps out of voice and begins sermonizing on some topic or another. When doing so, she would frequently generalize and streotype blacks. It might go something like this: "The Negro is kind and child-like by nature, loving beauty and approaching the world with the simplistic air of a school child." She, of course, didn't mean it as an insult - it simply comes off like that today because our worldviews and sensibilities are so dramatically different from that of the mid-19th century. For its time, Uncle Tom's Cabin was extraordinarily radical and liberal, and was viewed by Southerners as vicious left-wing propaganda. It actually spawned a cottage industry of books written (mostly by Southerners) to contradict it.

Lords of the North – Bernard Cornwell…9/30

Sword Song – Bernard Cornwell…10/4
Parts 3 and 4 in Cornwell's Anglo-Saxon novels.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling…10/16

When the Lion Feeds – Wilbur Smith…11/9

The Sound of Thunder – Wilbur Smith…11/20

A Sparrow Falls – Wilbur Smith…12/12
These are the first three books of the "Courntney" series. Smith has since gone on to write about 14 Courney novels. The first book here - "When the Lion Feeds" - was Smith's first published book, first published back in 1964.

Liberating the Gospels – J.S. Spong…12/22
Another must-read for any Christian. This one has really altered my perception on how and why the Gospels were written. It has shown me that the biggest problem with understanding the Gospels is that we read them like 21st century post-Englightenment people, not like the 1st century Jews who wrote them. When you approach the Gospels with modern black and white thinking, you end up with literalists on the one hand, and those who reject it all as superstition and lies on the other hand. Spong shows why both positions are wrong. His basic thesis is that the Gospel stories were not intended by their writers to be understood literally. He then spends 250 pages defending that statement, and does so in profound and compelling ways.

The Method of Jesus' Crucifixion

It is almost universally understood among Christians and those familiar with the stories of the New Testament that Jesus of Nazareth was executed by being nailed to a cross.

Like most other people, this is a fact of history that I have never really questioned. I still do not question whether Jesus was executed by means of crucifixion, but lately I have begun investigating the historical basis for assuming his crucifixion actually entailed being nailed to the cross.

It is a known fact that the vast majority of Roman crucifixions did not actually involve nails or spikes. The condemned were simply tied to a cross and left to the elements, where they would slowly suffocate due to the position of the body. The whole purpose of crucifixion was to make the victim suffer a slow, agonizing death, not otherwise involving bodily violence. Driving spikes through the wrists or feet could have hastened death and therefore reduced the severity of the penalty. Perhaps more importantly, nails or spikes would have been a costly extravagance, and the Romans were nothing if not practical. With the tens of thousands of criminals and prisoners-of-war that the Romans are said to have crucified, it would have been cost-prohibitive to use anything other than ropes. This is why the historical data shows that most crucifixion victims were bound to the cross, not nailed.

With this in mind, we turn to the stories from the Bible. Readers may be surprised to discover that not a single account of Jesus’ crucifixion from the four Gospels says that Jesus was nailed to the cross. Instead, the writers simply note that Jesus was “crucified.” The images we have of Jesus’ executioners painstakingly affixing him with spikes to the cross come to us from art and film, not from the stories of the Gospels.

In fact, in our modern English-language Bibles, the word “nail” only appears three times in the New Testament. In at least two of these spots – Acts 2:23 and Colossians 2:14b – and possibly in the third – John 20:25b – the word is actually mistranslated.

Acts 2:23 (NIV) – “This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.”

In this passage, the phrase translated as “nailing him to the cross” was based on the single Greek word prospegnymi, which does not mean “nailing to a cross,” but rather simply “to fasten.” In other words, wicked men put Jesus to death by fastening him to a cross. The method of this fastening, whether by nails, ropes, or some other method, is not implied. We know, however, that the same person who wrote Acts also wrote the Gospel of Luke, and as already noted, neither Luke nor any other Gospel writer, when describing the crucifixion, mentions that Jesus was actually nailed to his cross.

The second passage in question, Colossians 2:14b, says: “…he took [our sin] away, nailing it to the cross.”

This passage comes from a letter that may have been written by Paul, but was more likely written much later by someone writing in Paul’s name. Either way, the image provided by this translation is metaphorical – the writer is saying that our sin was “nailed to the cross” with Jesus. However, the Greek word used here – proseloo – simply means, as in the passage in Acts, “to fasten.” So again there is no implication in the original Greek whether this fastening involved nailing, tying, or some other method.

The final passage in question comes to us from the Gospel of John. However, it does not appear in the crucifixion scenes. Instead, it occurs in the resurrection scenes, specifically the famous account of “Doubting Thomas.” In 20:25b, Thomas says: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”

The Greek word used here is helos. This is a very obscure word that is not attested in very many ancient Greek sources outside the New Testament – and its only occurrence in the New Testament is in this one passage. This means that the meaning of the word must be inferred from the context in which it is used. Most ancient Greek dictionaries suggest that it probably meant “spike” or “stud,” but some sources translate it as “talon,” “claw,” or “fingernail.” It is notable to point out that in the few ancient sources outside the New Testament where the word is used, the context seems to point more strongly to the latter group than the former, meaning it may have more likely referred to a fingernail than a spike.

If you read this passage in John as though the “nail” marks referred to were fingernail marks, it still makes sense in context. A crucifixion victim would no doubt have been tensing and squeezing his hands in pain and suffering, potentially digging his fingernails into his palms. Perhaps John’s Thomas was referring to this when he talked about “nail marks.”

Of course, that seems far-fetched, but even if we assume that John did, in fact, mean spikes, it is still notable to point out that the one and only reference to Jesus being nailed to his cross comes in the last of the Gospels, one of the last overall books to be written in the New Testament, composed somewhere around 100 C.E., or 70 years after Jesus’ death. And even then it comes in a resurrection account, not in the actual description of the crucifixion.

This rather late appearance in the Biblical texts of actual nails being used in Jesus’ execution is made even more significant when we consider the historical context. I have already noted that crucifixion in ancient Rome involved tying the victim to a cross, not nailing them. However, there is at least one account in secular records of the Romans actually nailing victims to crosses. This comes to us from the historian Josephus, who chronicles the Jewish-Roman War of 66-70 C.E. This war, of course, culminated in the final destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and sent the Jews into political exile for the next two millennia. Josephus tells us that the Romans, during their siege of Jerusalem, executed numerous Jewish rebels by crucifixion, and Josephus notes with horror and shock that many of these people were actually nailed to their crosses. The obvious implication in the tone Josephus uses is that this was an especially vicious and unusual anomaly.

This siege of Jerusalem, of course, had a dramatic impact on the texts of the New Testament, because many of them were written during, or just after, these world-changing events within Jewish history. If Josephus’ impression is anything to go by, it is safe to assume that Jews everywhere would have been aware of how the Romans not only crucified a large number of Jewish rebels, but even nailed them to their crosses. It would be easy to see, then, how the idea of Jesus being nailed to his cross might have crept into some of the stories of Jesus’ crucifixion – such as the Doubting Thomas story in the Gospel of John. The fact that the Romans of the early 1st century – in the time of Jesus – did not tend to crucify people with nails would have been lost on the writer of John, who was writing after the horrific events of 70 C.E. when the Romans actually did crucify people with nails. John’s account, then, may very well be a clear and obvious case of a Gospel writer writing modern perspectives back into the story of Jesus.

Whether Jesus was crucified with nails, or simply tied to his cross, does not, of course, really change anything for Christianity, theologically speaking. For those with a peculiar obsession with Jesus’ physical suffering (something that seems to be a hallmark of many conservative Catholics), this may be problematic, but otherwise it should not have any significant bearing on one’s faith.

More than anything else, this is simply an interesting tidbit that can help to illumine the difference between what many Christians commonly believe about Jesus and what the Bible actually says.

Merry $&%*$* Christmas

Well, I think it's fair for me to say that when I say "Christmas really sucked this year," I'm not just being cynical.

Our plan was to leave Tuesday for the in-laws' house, and return on Friday evening or Saturday morning. I was really excited about having the time off work to just spend with family, so I had high hopes as we left town.

We stopped on the way out and got gas. From that gas station, about 2 miles from our house, it is roughly 105 miles to my in-laws' house. We left right at 4 pm.

We arrived at my in-laws' house at 11:57 pm.

Now, of course I am thankful that despite the enormously long trip, we got there in one piece. But I have never in my life experienced a long-distance driving fiasco like the one I experienced on Tuesday afternoon.

I noticed before we even got out to the Interstate that the roads were slick. This came as a shock, because the thermometer on my car said it was about 35 degrees outside (i.e., above the freezing point), and it had been raining lightly all day - not a single snowflake at all. Yet there were slick spots on the road underneath the overpasses.

As a result of this, M and I began discussing whether we should just wait until the next day to go. But as it was above freezing, and was only raining, I guessed that the slick spots underneath the overpasses were just an anomoly, and things would be fine.

We got about 5 miles up the Interstate, just barely out of the county, when we ran into a wall of traffic. We stayed motionless for about 30 or 45 minutes. This was especially frustrating because we were actually stopped just a few dozen feet past an exit ramp that we could have taken to go back home. We were hearing all sorts of reports on the radio about accidents all over the city due to freezing rain. By the time we started moving again, we decided to keep forging ahead, thinking it would probably be okay if we just took it slow.

It wasn't.

About 15 more miles up the Interstate, we hit another slow spot, and although we didn't come to a stop, we creeped at 5 mph for about half an hour. We finally passed the wreck that was causing that slow down, but the traffic didn't clear beyond it as one would expect. Instead, there was apparently a second wreck that had just happened about a mile farther up the road. After slipping and sliding in an attempt to let ambulances with chains on their tires go by, we came to another complete stop. I tested the road with my foot and discovered that the entire road, from shoulder to shoulder, was covered in a sheet of ice. This was despite the fact that it was still above freezing (about 35 by now), and still only raining.

We sat there, without moving so much as a centimeter...

...for 3 solid hours.

It was already dark by the time we got stopped there, and everyone had their cars off and headlights off and people were getting out and peeing and walking their dogs and some were even hoofing it up to the next exit.

Finally, by about 9:30, we got moving again, and the road was, of course, treacherous. We stopped and ate McDonald's, then slipped and slid all the way down the entrance ramp back onto the interstate. Remember, it's still about 3 degrees above freezing, and the only precipitation falling is occasional liquid drizzle. Furthermore, the roads off the exit - where we got McDonald's - were just wet. Not a sign of ice anywhere, either on the roads or in McD's parking lot.

About 5 minutes after getting back on the highway, an SUV passed me doing about 60 (I was going about 25). Like many SUV owners, this person apparently thinks (or, perhaps I should say "thought") that the laws of physics don't apply to them. Either way, about 50 feet ahead of me, he spun out, fishtailed several times, narrowly missed the left side cement wall, then spun across all three lanes of traffic, and narrowly missed the right side cement wall. I was the closest car to him, but I was going slow enough that I was able to stop behind him without getting hit. I was so rattled I got off the Interstate again, just to calm down.

In the end, as I said, we arrived safely at the in-laws' at 11:57 pm. It took us 8 full hours to make a 105-mile drive. At the same time, my parents were flying to England. It only took them 30 minutes longer to get from Texas, across country, across ocean, and into London, than it took us to go a distance equivalent to driving from Tampa to Miami.

After that, it just seemed that everything was crappy. There were a lot of arguments over the next few days, a lot of high tempers and irritability. Our youngest daughter, S, was sick with a cold when we arrived, and that turned into pneumonia. M had the luxury of taking her to the ER at 6 a.m. on Christmas morning, and S was essentially miserable, uncontrollable, and often inconsolable, the entire week.

I literally don't think I've ever had a Christmas that was quite such a horrible experience from beginning to end. There were a few bright spots, but overall, it just sucked.

So anway....Happy New Year!!!

The Virgin Birth: Miracle or Legend? Part IV

Read Part I
Read Part II
Read Part III

THE JEWISH TRADITION OF MIDRASHIC WRITING

Midrash is a Hebrew term that means something akin to “interpretation,” specifically of a religious text. Its English equivalent is the word “exegesis,” which is often used in theological circles. When a pastor preaches a sermon based on an interpretation of a text in the Bible, his sermon is based on exegesis. But the term midrash, like so many others in the Hebrew language, is a very complex one, involving more than just simple “interpretation.”

One facet of the midrashic tradition in ancient Judaism involved interpreting, and re-telling, modern events through the lens of the collective cultural past. This was done for the purpose of describing, in a literary way, the significance of modern events. It was not unlike how Americans, on 9/11, continually compared the horror of the event to the attack on Pearl Harbor or Kennedy’s assassination. Jewish scribes used midrashic techniques in their storytelling to elevate significant modern events to legendary status. But they went a step further than simply comparing a modern event to a similar significant event in the past. They would actually tell the story of the modern event through the lens of the past event, as a way of bringing the modern event into historical significance.

To put this into a perspective that is a bit easier to understand, consider this midrashic account of the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg:

Gathering his troops around him, General George Meade – a large, stoic man with a brilliant military mind – was faced with a difficult decision. His troops needed food and shelter from the cold, but the closest town – Gettysburg – was on the other side of an ice-bound river. The enemy was closing in from the south, and a messenger galloped through Meade’s temporary barracks warning that the Greycoats were coming. Making a decision that would change the course of the war, Meade set his face for Gettysburg and loaded his troops into makeshift rafts, crossing the frozen, treacherous river. He lost not a single man in the crossing, and his troops took up defensive positions in Gettysburg, awaiting the Rebel attack.

Now, what I have done is describe a real event, but I have woven in images and stories from the Revolutionary War in order to enliven the account and to make sense of Meade’s greatness in the battle. One way I have done this is by comparing Meade obliquely to George Washington. The physical and mental characteristics I have applied to Meade are actually characteristics associated with Washington, and it was Washington who crossed a frozen river to lead his army into battle. By tying Meade midrashically to Washington, I am honoring Meade and demonstrating what a great general he was. I have also tied in a second Revolutionary War image, alluding to a messenger on horseback stating that the “Greycoats” are coming. This is midrash on the story of Paul Revere’s Ride, tied into the account of Meade and Gettysburg to show the timeless importance of the battle.

In writing this story midrashically, I have compromised some of the literal nature of the event. There was no frozen river that Meade crossed to get into Gettysburg. Meade did not go to Gettysburg because his troops needed food and shelter. There was no rider warning of approaching enemy troops. The actual circumstances of the build-up to the battle are dramatically over-simplified. Finally, it was not winter when the battle took place, but the dead of summer.

What I have written is not literal history. Instead, it is a colorful account of a real event (that is, the Battle of Gettysburg), told metaphorically through the lens of several commonly known American stories.

This is one way that ancient Jewish scribes employed midrash. It was a storytelling tradition, used to bring life to modern events and to raise the importance of such events to epic realms. It was the way ancient Jews attempted to explain the inexplicable, describe the indescribable, and give legend to the legendary. While it may seem foreign to our modern black and white way of thinking, this was normal to a 1st century Jew. This is how their rabbis and scribes interpreted and retold the stories of the Jewish past and present. The tradition, in fact, exists heavily in the Old Testament. The two books of Chronicles, for instance, are very likely midrash on the preceding two books of Kings.

THE VIRGIN BIRTH STORIES AS MIDRASH

After a lot of textual study, I am persuaded by the arguments presented by many scholars suggesting that the virgin birth stories in Matthew and Luke were midrashic stories, told for the purpose of interpreting the life of Jesus through the lens of the Jewish past as told in the Jewish scriptures (our Old Testament). They employed this technique throughout their Gospels for the purpose of describing the indescribable power met in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. Nowhere does this midrashic tradition present itself more obviously than in the stories of the virgin birth.

If this theory is correct, and I believe it is, then the various aspects of the virgin birth accounts were never meant to be understood literally. Matthew and Luke were not intending to give journalistic, “just the facts, ma’am,” accounts of Jesus’ origins. They were creating midrash on the birth of Jesus to demonstrate the timeless power of God met in Jesus.

Thus, they are neither literal history, as traditional Christians assume, nor are they superstition, myth, or intentional lie, as skeptics, non-Christians, and atheists assume.

There are literally dozens of midrashic elements in the virgin birth stories, far too many for me to list individually. However, I will outline a few.

First, the Magi. In Isaiah chapter 60, the writer says that “kings” will arrive on camels to see the glory of God’s light, bearing with them gold and frankincense. This same passage says that people will come from the land of Sheba, and other Old Testament texts tell of a story where the Queen of Sheba arrived on camels to King Solomon’s palace bearing great quantities of spices. The land of Sheba was most famous for its myrrh.

Second, the swaddling clothes. This image draws on a passage from a Jewish text not in the Old Testament, but part of ancient Jewish scripture, known as the Wisdom of Solomon. In that text, King Solomon is said to have been “nursed with care in swaddling clothes.” By drawing on that image, the Gospel writers were comparing Jesus to one of Judaism’s greatest kings, the son of David himself.

Third, the manger. It is interesting to note that neither Luke nor Matthew actually mention anything about a stable. The image of the stable, with the animals lowing in the background, comes from Luke’s account because he notes that Mary laid Jesus “in a manger,” since there was no room in any local inns. The significance of the manger comes, like so many other elements of the story of Jesus, from Isaiah. In the very first chapter of that book, the writer states that “the ox knows its master and the donkey its owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.” As John Shelby Spong puts it, Isaiah was saying that the Israelites “did not even recognize that they were fed each day from the [manger] of God’s bounty.” By having Mary place Jesus in a manger, the writer of Luke was showing that Jesus was the sum of God’s bounty – he was the “food from the manger” that would give eternal life to those who partook.

Fourth, Bethlehem. King David, the first and greatest king of the Jews, had come from Bethlehem. David was known as a shepherd before he became a king. Later prophets predicted a new king coming from the line of David in Bethlehem. Bethlehem, according to Jewish scriptures, was also the home of the “tower of the flocks,” which was a structure that helped local shepherds keep watch over their enormous flocks of sheep. The Gospels writers, therefore, when writing about the man who would later be called the “Good Shepherd,” placed Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem, where the first shepherd king had originated. And Luke, drawing on the image of the “tower of the flocks,” added other shepherds, who were “watching over their flocks” by night.

Fifth, Joseph. Joseph is characterized in the virgin birth accounts as wholly obedient to God’s will. He is given numerous divine instructions in dreams. Following one of these instructions, Joseph takes his family to Egypt. According to Matthew, Joseph has a father named Jacob. In the Old Testament, there is another prominent character named Joseph. His father was also named Jacob. Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt. Once there, he came to prominence in the court of the pharaoh because he was able to interpret dreams. He won favor with God because he was wholly obedient to God’s will. The midrashic connections are very obvious, and the reason for tying Jesus’ father to the Joseph of the Old Testament becomes even clearer when one considers the political background. Joseph and his brother Judah were the two ancient Jews whose descendents eventually settled and unified the Jewish kingdom. Joseph’s descendents ruled over the northern kingdom, which became known as Israel, while Judah’s descendents controlled the southern kingdom, which was known simply as Judah. The northern kingdom was destroyed fairly early in Jewish history, and only Judah (which included Jerusalem) remained. Jesus was already linked midrashically to Judah through his Bethlehem birth (Bethlehem was also in Judah). It was widely known, however, that Jesus came from Galilee, which was in the area of the old northern kingdom of Israel – Joseph’s area. So by tying Jesus’ father to the Joseph of the Old Testament, the Gospel writers were giving Jesus a connection to both sides of Jewish history.

What these examples show is that virtually every aspect of the birth accounts of Jesus, as given in Matthew and Luke, can be tied midrashically to stories from the Jewish scriptures – the Old Testament. The writers of these Gospels were not writing literal history, but they were also not telling intentional lies or just making things up for kicks. They were depicting Jesus’ origins against the collective stories of the Jewish people, as a means of describing the profound and otherwise indescribable power met in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

CONCLUSION

When we, as Christians, begin to understand the distinctly Jewish way that the virgin birth stories were written, we begin to understand Jesus in new and profound ways. The writers of these stories did not intend for the stories to be understood literally. They intended for them to be understood midrashically, as creative portraits describing the ineffable power met in Jesus of Nazareth. They were not writing for an audience plagued with gentile 21st century (or even gentile 2nd century) black and white thinking. They were writing for an audience that understood the world through 1st century eyes, and they were writing in a style that was distinctly Jewish. To overlook this fact is, in my opinion, to completely miss the point of not only the virgin birth stories, but the Gospel tradition in its entirety.

Many commentators would point out that without the virgin birth, the theology of mainstream Christianity is in vain. If Jesus was just a human being, conceived like everyone else, then he cannot be God’s son. And if he was not God’s son, then there is no reason to put faith in the Christian story. The virgin birth is the core around which most other Christian theology revolves. Remove it, and you must begin to dramatically rethink what it means to be a Christian. Yet to avoid the ramifications of the textual evidence out of spiritual discomfort is not acceptable to many people. If that requires a rethinking of one’s own Christian faith, then I believe we should not avoid that opportunity for personal and spiritual growth.

John Shelby Spong has called the misunderstanding that plagues New Testament interpretation the “Gentile Captivity of the Bible.” Only by, as he says, “reading the Bible with Jewish eyes,” can we hope to move more deeply into an understanding of how God was met through Jesus, and what the life-changing power was that led Jesus’ followers to call him the very Christ and savior of the world.

* Anyone who is interested in reading more about the midrashic methods used by the Gospel writers is encouraged to read scholar and theologian John Shelby Spong’s book “Liberating the Gospels: Reading the Bible With Jewish Eyes,” which is based in part on the works of British biblical scholar Michael Goulder.

The Virgin Birth: Miracle or Legend? Part III

Read Part I
Read Part II

THE GOSPELS OF LUKE AND JOHN

As we move forward chronologically, we come next to Luke, followed by John. Luke was probably written around 90 C.E., with John probably coming 5-10 years later. Luke also relied heavily on Mark, although not quite as heavily as Matthew. There is a quite heated debate in the scholarly world about second sources potentially used by Matthew and Luke. Many scholars believe Matthew and Luke – in addition to using Mark – also used a second source, dubbed “Q,” which contained sayings of Jesus. This theory accounts for material that is common to Luke and Matthew, but not contained in Mark. Others simply account for this common, non-Markan material by suggesting Luke used Matthew as a source. The first camp rejects this because Matthew and Luke were written too close to each other, chronologically, for Luke to have had access to Matthew’s account. Either way, Luke also includes a virgin birth story, though the facts of the story vary wildly from Matthew’s – which perhaps lends credence to the “Q” theory. More on the variations between Luke and Matthew in a moment.

The Gospel of John, like the Gospel of Mark, contains no virgin birth account. Furthermore, on two separate occasions, the writer of John refers to Jesus as “the son of Joseph.” On one of these occasions, it is actually one of Jesus’ own disciples using the phrase. On the other, it is a group of skeptics questioning how Jesus can claim to have come from God when everyone knows his parents and background. These facts are fairly significant. How could one of Jesus’ own disciples not have known of his miraculous birth? Furthermore, since there is no virgin birth account in the story, the implication is that while Jesus is the “Word” of God in human form, that Word entered the world quietly and without fanfare, presumably settling upon an otherwise fully human infant.

It is important to remember that the Gospels were not written as a collection to be read together. Each of the Gospels, as this chronological look should make clear, was written as a stand-alone account, by four different people writing in different decades. And while two of those writers incorporated stories from earlier writers into their own accounts, each Gospel was written for an individual community and not as part of a “series” to be studied with all the rest. Therefore, if you were a Christian living in the community that Mark or John was writing to, you would have no textual basis whatsoever for presuming a miraculous birth. You would simply read and study those texts and come away with the impression that Jesus was a man who, in some mysterious way, had a special connection to God. And in fact, if you were reading only Mark, you would not only have no concept of a miraculous birth, but you would actually think that Jesus was likely estranged from his family, and perhaps even illegitimate!

The fact that a reader of Mark and John would have no concept of a virgin birth would actually hold true for the entire New Testament, with the exceptions of Matthew and Luke. Those two books are, in fact, our only source for the virgin birth account. No other book in the New Testament refers to Jesus having anything other than a normal, unremarkable origin.

But what do those two accounts actually tell us? Do they give us a unified picture that can be relied upon simply because of internal consistency?

The answer, unfortunately, is no.

THE BIBLICAL ACCOUNTS OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH

When we consider the birth of Jesus, we tend to merge both Matthew and Luke’s account into one, effectively creating a third account which neither Luke nor Matthew, nor any other Biblical source, gives us. Thus, we tend to imagine three Oriental kings, a group of shepherds, heralding angels, a massive glowing star over a stable, and offerings of frankincense and myrrh. In fact, there are no kings at all in either of the stories – the idea of three kings comes from a popular Christmas song, not from the Bible. The Bible tells us they were “Magi,” or magicians, not kings, and it does not tell us there were three of them, it simply tells us that “Magi from the east” came to find Jesus. Furthermore, neither story tells of a glowing star over a stable – those are two concepts merged from Matthew and Luke, creating an image that neither account gives – Matthew’s star leads the Magi to a house; Luke has no star. In Luke’s account there are no Magi, exotic gifts, or glowing stars, and in Matthew’s account, there is no stable, no angels singing praises in the heavens, and no shepherds.

Matthew tells us that Mary and Joseph lived in Bethlehem, while Luke tells us that they lived in Nazareth and were merely on a trip to Bethlehem when Mary gave birth. Matthew’s account specifically states that the Magi visited Jesus at home – at the family house in Bethlehem. He then relates the story of King Herod hearing about the birth of a king from the Magi, and ordering the slaughter of all Jewish male babies under 2 years of age (implying that a year or two has passed since Jesus’ actual birth). To escape this slaughter, Mary and Joseph move to Egypt. After several years, King Herod dies and the family moves back. Initially, they are going to return to their home in Bethlehem. But Joseph is warned in a dream not to go back there, so instead they settle on Nazareth, a quiet little backwater in rural Galilee.

Luke, on the other hand, gives no account of the Magi, and states that the family returned to their home in Nazareth after the various Jewish rituals, required by Mosaic Law, had been performed – a time span of about 40 days. Recall that for Luke, the only reason they had been in Bethlehem to start with was because Joseph had been required to travel there for a census registration.

More inconsistencies exist between the two accounts. In Luke, Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel, who tells her that she is to conceive God’s son, despite being a virgin. The text mentions Joseph only to tell that Mary is engaged to be married to him. Matthew tells us also that Mary and Joseph are engaged, but instead of an angel coming to visit Mary, the angel visits Joseph. Mary, the text tells us, has become pregnant, and Joseph – thinking the child is illegitimate – decides to quietly dismiss her. An angel appears to him, however, telling him that the child is the offspring of God, and encouraging Joseph to keep Mary as his fiancé. One has to wonder why Matthew’s Mary would not have told Joseph up front about her visit (described in Luke) from the angel Gabriel. Matthew’s text implies that Mary simply turned up pregnant, and so Joseph was going to send her away quietly.

While both texts say that Mary and Joseph were only engaged at the time of the conception, the texts disagree about when they got married. Matthew tells us explicitly that they were married following the visit to Joseph by the angel – Matthew makes sure to point out, however, that Joseph did not consummate the marriage until after the baby was born. Luke, however, does not ever say when Joseph and Mary finally actually tied the knot, but he mentions that they were still only engaged during the trip to Bethlehem when Mary gave birth. They presumably got married after that time.

Finally, another major inconsistency exists in the genealogy of Jesus given by the two writers. Many of the names in the two lists are different, there are a competing number of generations to get back to King David, and even Joseph’s own father has a completely different name between the two Gospels.

What this all means is that the only two accounts we have in the entire New Testament of the virgin birth vary wildly from one another, and have contradictions that no amount of convoluting can reconcile. No other texts in the New Testament mention anything about a miraculous origin for Jesus, and the textual evidence suggests very strongly that this tradition did not enter the Christian story until the time of Matthew and Luke. Prior to that, Jesus is portrayed merely as a human man, born to human parents, and this holds true even in the writings that came after Matthew and Luke. If one removed Matthew and Luke from the canon, and read the remaining New Testament from beginning to end, one would never get even the first clue that Jesus’ birth had been anything other than normal and routine.

Taken together, what do all of these things mean for the virgin birth tradition of Jesus? First, they cast a long shadow of doubt on any literal understanding of the stories. The textual evidence, in my opinion, is overwhelming that the virgin birth stories are literary creations, not historical accounts. Does this mean, however, that the stories should be rejected as ancient superstition? Is Christianity null and void because the virgin birth stories may not be literally true?

We will look at the answers to those questions in the fourth and final installment of this look at the virgin birth tradition.

Read Part IV

The Virgin Birth: Miracle or Legend? Part II

Read Part I

THE GOSPEL OF MARK

The first New Testament Gospel to be written was the Gospel of Mark, most likely written somewhere between 70 and 75 C.E., about 40 years, or two generations, after Jesus died. In this first Christian Gospel, as in the writings of Paul, there is no mention of a virgin birth. Again, and with even more significance, it is hard to imagine that someone sitting down to write the life story of Jesus would have failed to include this otherwise incredibly important event. The virgin birth is the crux around which so much Christian theology hinges. Why would the writer of Mark leave out such an obvious argument for the validity of Jesus’ life and ministry?

The conspicuous absence of a virgin birth story from Mark is, by itself, cause for pause when analyzing the origins of Jesus. But there is still other textual evidence from the Gospel of Mark that sheds light on the eventual development of this virgin birth story.

There are several places in Mark where the writer mentions Jesus’ family. One of these places is found in Mark chapter 3, where it is noted that Jesus’ “mother and brothers” came to take him home, because they believed he was “out of his mind.” The implication is that they heard about the preaching, teaching, and exorcisms that he was performing, and came to get him because they were shocked and disturbed by his behavior. When his family arrived, someone informed Jesus of their presence. Jesus responded by ignoring his family completely and instead giving a teaching about how anyone who does the will of God is his mother, brother, and sister.

The significance of this story should be apparent. Not only is there no virgin birth account in this first Christian Gospel, but Jesus’ mother is portrayed as coming to take him home because she thinks he has gone crazy. Would a woman who experienced all the aspects of the virgin birth stories really react this way? A woman who, later Gospels tell us, was visited by an angel and told that she would conceive God’s very own physical offspring, a child who would eventually save the world from its sins. A woman who conceived, carried, and birthed this promised child, despite still being a virgin. A woman who, with her family and Jesus in tow, was forced to flee to Egypt to escape the wrath of a murderous king who had heard all the talk about a great child being born in his midst. A woman who, when the boy was 12, marveled at how he spoke with authority and knowledge to the elders of the temple. Could such a woman possibly have been shocked and confused when that same child, now an adult, began to actually carry out the mission that he had been sent by God to do?

Mark’s account simply cannot be reconciled with the virgin birth stories that appear in other Gospels.

Putting Mark’s story of Jesus’ mother and brothers aside for a moment, there is a second important spot in Mark’s Gospel that can give us a bit of insight. In chapter 6, Mark details the reaction of the crowds to the works and teachings of Jesus. He has the crowd exclaim: “What is this wisdom that has been given to him? Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?”

It is notable that Mark, through the words of the crowd, refers to Jesus as “the son of Mary.” In 1st century Jewish society, a man was referred to as the son of his mother only when the paternity was in question, or the father was not known. It was actually a mild insult, certainly used derisively, to refer to a man as the son of his mother. This is a small piece of textual evidence that casts doubt on the later Gospels’ accounts of Joseph and the virgin birth. It is significant to point out that Mark never mentions Jesus’ father at all, by name or even by reference. Some scholars have suggested that, in fact, Matthew – writing after Mark – created the character of Joseph to fill a gap in the known history of Jesus. They suggest that it may have been an inconvenient truth that Jesus’ paternity was in question, or that he was a bastard (a big “no-no” in 1st century society), so later Gospel writers created Joseph to fill this gap. There is a lot of intriguing evidence supporting this assertion, but for the purposes of this essay, I will simply note that Mark does not mention any father at all for Jesus, and specifically calls Jesus the son of his mother, implying no special circumstances (such as a virgin birth) surrounding that genetic fact.

THE GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

Moving on to the next chronological Gospel, we arrive at the book of Matthew – the first Christian text to describe a virgin birth. Although Matthew comes first in our modern Bibles, it was written some 10-15 years after Mark (during the 9th decade of the Common Era), and its writer relied heavily on Mark’s Gospel as a primary source. “Relied heavily” is perhaps an understatement. Mark’s Gospel contains 664 verses. Matthew regurgitated no less than 606 of those verses into his own Gospel, many of them word for word. That is somewhere in the range of 91%. What it boils down to is that virtually every scene from the Gospel of Mark is incorporated and repeated in the Gospel of Matthew in some form.

With that in mind, it is significant to note that Matthew completely deletes from his Gospel the scene where Jesus’ mother and brothers come to take him home because they think he has lost his mind. We have already seen that there is no way to reconcile Mark’s account of this story with later virgin birth traditions. The writer of Matthew was savvy enough to recognize this fact himself. So he simply omitted that Markan story from his Gospel. This might not be significant if Matthew had only casually relied on Mark’s content. But, as seen above, he used 91% of Mark when writing his story of Jesus’ life. The fact that he omitted this scene completely is, therefore, not an accident.

Another interesting point comes when we compare Matthew’s account of the crowd’s reaction to Jesus to the same account in Mark. We saw earlier that Mark has the crowd exclaim: “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary?” Yet when Matthew copies this scene, he changes the wording. It is a subtle change, easy to overlook, but when put into the context of the virgin birth story, it is quite profound. Matthew’s version goes like this: “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary?” By changing a few words, Matthew has solved the problem of reconciling Mark’s lack of a virgin birth story with his own account. Now, instead of Jesus being the carpenter, Jesus is merely the “carpenter’s son” (a reference to Joseph – who, as we saw, does not appear in Mark’s gospel). Also, now instead of the derogatory “son of Mary,” Mary is simply listed as the name of his mother. Matthew fixed several problems by doing this. First, he incorporated Joseph into Mark’s account. Second, he cleared up the question of paternity that is raised by Mark’s reference, and eliminated any sense that Jesus may have been illegitimate. Finally, he made Mark’s account – which contains no virgin birth – fit neatly with his own story that includes a miraculous origin.

In the upcoming Part III of this exercise, we will continue our march through a chronological look at the New Testament evidence for the virgin birth tradition.

Read Part III

The Virgin Birth: Miracle or Legend? Part I

INTRODUCTION

The story of Jesus’ miraculous birth is perhaps one of the best known stories from the Gospel tradition of Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, few people familiar with Christianity are unaware of the accounts of Jesus being born to a virgin mother, fathered by the spirit of God.

Plagued as our Western society seems to be with black and white thinking (something is either right or wrong, something either is or is not, etc.), there are generally two categories that folks fall into: those who accept the stories of Jesus’ birth on faith, and those who reject the stories of Jesus’ birth as fantasy, legend, mythology, superstition, or outright lies.

It is perhaps noteworthy to point out that no one in mainstream society fails to recognize that the story is far-fetched. We know that women do not conceive without a male counterpart. We know that children are not born without a biological father. This is why the story is accepted on faith by Christian believers – they believe it was a miracle. The knowledge that women do not conceive without a male partner is not some special insight that we have today in this post-Enlightenment world. Virgin birth stories would have been just as fantastical, and just as far-fetched, to a 1st century mind as they are to a 21st century mind.

In the context of black and white thinking, the arguments presented by the competing camps are generally easy to predict. Believers argue that while no woman can conceive biologically without a male counterpart, the story of Jesus’ birth represents a miracle performed by God – a special circumstance where God broke into human history and altered his own rules, in order to fulfill an eternal plan. It is clearly a true story, because even in the 1st century, no one would have made such an outrageous claim if there was no evidence, or no common knowledge, to back it up. It would have been a liability to the emerging Christian religion if it had not been rooted in reality. Even in the first century, a believer will argue, people were not so superstitious as to believe in virgin births without any basis or reason to do so.

The skeptic, on the other hand, might present a number of alternatives. They might argue that the story is legendary, mythological. Jesus had a profound impact on his followers and, as with any influential public figure, legends rose up around him in the years and decades following his death. This was particularly true because these people were living in a pre-Enlightenment world where superstition was commonplace. Others might argue that it was an outright lie, told by Christians in an attempt to elevate their leader to divine heights, or perhaps to cover up the fact that Jesus was the product of sexual misconduct outside of marriage. Still others might argue that stories from other religious traditions involving virgin births were simply incorporated into the Christian religion by converts from Roman polytheism.

It is my belief that this black and white thinking has led both sides away from a more logical explanation. No one can know the absolute “truth” of what happened, and I do not claim that my views are anything other than historical speculation based on the preponderance of evidence, but I do believe that we can get a bit closer to the truth by removing the lens of black and white thinking and looking analytically at the evidence available to us.

To begin with, I believe the answer to the question posed in the title of this essay is “neither.” I do not believe a miracle was performed by God upon the conception of Jesus; neither do I believe that the story is simply a legend, superstition, or outright lie.

To the average person, it may seem difficult to imagine that there is much “evidence” that can be analyzed by historians. All we have are the texts, and those texts are fairly clear about what happened – Jesus was born to a virgin who was impregnated by God. This is why most people either believe or do not believe. How can there be any evidence to analyze historically?

In fact, there is a preponderance of textual evidence that can be looked at critically, analyzed historically and contextually, and put under the microscope of historical dissection.

THE PAULINE CORPUS

The earliest texts in the New Testament come to us from the letters of Paul, generally written during the 5th, 6th, and 7th decades of the Common Era (for reference, Jesus probably died right around the beginning of the 4th decade – that is, 30 C.E.).

In these letters of Paul, no reference is ever made to Jesus’ birth – miraculous or otherwise. With something as profound in the story of Jesus as a virgin birth, one would have expected Paul to mention it, particularly during his many attempts to convince his readers why Jesus really was God’s son. What better way to demonstrate Jesus' divine calling than mentioning the fact that he was born to a virgin? Yet Paul never mentions it, and in fact seems to make clear that God “chose” Jesus as his son by resurrecting him from the dead. From Romans, chapter 1: “[God’s] Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead…”

If we read that verse with the knowledge that the Gospels – and the virgin birth stories – had not yet been written down, it is hard to imagine that Paul would have written these words had he been aware that Jesus was God’s own physical offspring, born of a virgin. Paul is saying fairly straight-forwardly that “according to the flesh” – that is, according to Jesus’ humanity – he was descended through David, but that he was declared to be God’s offspring by his resurrection from the dead. In other words, no longer just a man, but now God’s own son, through his resurrection.

Another verse from the Paul canon that is important for our purposes is found in the book of Galatians. From chapter 4: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law…”

Here Paul seems to be implying that God’s plan was eternal, or at the very least predated Jesus’ life on earth, but the phrase he uses – “born of a woman” – is the important part. That colloquialism, in the 1st century as well as now, implied no unusual circumstances surrounding a person’s birth. We are all “born of a woman.” We are all united together in humanity. Even our heroes – athletes, actors, singers, politicians, religious leaders – were “born of a woman.” Just as the phrase is used today to refer to our common humanity, and to imply no special circumstances regarding someone’s entry into the world, so it was also used in the 1st century. If Paul – the earliest New Testament writer – had known of a virgin birth tradition, would he have referred to Jesus with the colloquialism that pointed to our shared humanity and the fact that we all enter the world in relative obscurity and without fanfare?

This point is driven home even farther when one considers the context in which Paul was speaking. In the phrase, he clearly implies that God’s plan pre-existed Jesus – Paul says God “sent his Son” into the world. But instead of following that with something like “conceived by a virgin,” he instead says “born of a woman" - in other words, as normal and natural and unheralded as anyone else. And Paul's choice of word - translated here as "woman" - is signifcant too. That word referred specifically to a married woman - not an unmarried virgin, as Mary was later said to be. It is important to remember that in the 1st century, a woman's entire purpose for life was procreation. So where we have only one word for an adult female - "woman" - ancient languages had many different words for "woman," each referring to the woman's particular stage in life - unmarried virgin, married woman, widow, etc. The word Paul used was the word for a married, and therefore sexually active, woman.

It seems fairly clear from the writings of Paul that he was not familiar with any virgin birth tradition surrounding Jesus, and Paul’s own theology is built upon the idea that God used Jesus – a human man whom he “declared” to be his son – to fulfill his greater purposes on earth. In fact, for Paul, it was Jesus’ very humanity that made the atonement possible – Jesus, a man like you and me, died on the cross and was resurrected, and because of that, the rest of us humans can also enter the eternal kingdom of God if we accept the gift of grace through the death of Jesus, whom Paul describes as the “first fruits” of the new creation. How can the rest of us follow Jesus – the first fruits – in the resurrection of the dead if he was not human like us? Many Christians may disagree with this theology, but their disagreement (in my opinion) is with the theology of Paul, not necessarily with me. On this point, it is important to note that there was also no Trinity concept at the time of Paul – that did not arise until several hundred years later. Paul would have had no concept of a Jesus who was both fully God and fully human, and he certainly makes no such claims in his own writings.

Having now established some textual clues from Paul to reasonably assert that Paul was not familiar with a virgin birth tradition, we move forward in our chronological look at the writings of the New Testament. This will frame Part II of our look at the virgin birth tradition, to be posted soon.

Read Part II