Jesus’ unlikely saviours: Judas and Pilate

April 5, 2009 at 8:13 pm (false gospels)

There’s a new holiday tradition in North America. Ben Witherington wryly observes:

Right at Easter time, just as the dandelions are starting to appear in my yard, a new crop of theories about Jesus and the Gospels usually pop up as well, often rushed into the Easter market.

Two years ago, Canadian author Tom Harpur released The Pagan Christ just before Easter. Harpur, who was once an Anglican priest, now doubts that Jesus ever existed. In his view, the Jesus “myth” is merely a pale imitation of pagan traditions, drawn in particular from Egyptian wisdom literature.

Another Easter, another revisionist take on the Gospel. In fact, this year’s offering is a double feature!

Judas as Jesus’ saviour

First, scholars announced that they have reconstructed the Gospel of Judas.

National Geographic cover story, the Gospel of JudasNo doubt, some people will claim that it is just as authoritative as the canonical Gospels. But please note, the Gospel of Judas cannot be traced any further back than 150 years after Jesus lived and died. (The only extant copy of the document is dated c. 300 A.D. The earliest reference to it comes from Irenaeus, c. 180 A.D.)

The Gospel of Judas sets out to rehabilitate Judas’s reputation. It presents Judas as Jesus’ co-conspirator — not a traitor.

According to the Gospel of Judas, Jesus wanted his spirit to be liberated from his body, and the crucifixion was a means to achieve that goal. Judas in effect saved Jesus from his earthly imprisonment. Witherington comments:

This document reflects the same sort of dualism that we find in many other Gnostic documents — matter or flesh is evil or tainted, spirit is good. …

This of course is miles from early Jewish theology about the goodness of creation and the flesh, much less the belief that God intends to redeem the flesh by means of [bodily] resurrection.

Witherington’s point is this:  the Gospel of Judas is simply wrong in the theology it ascribes to Jesus. Judaism and Christianity do not teach that human beings possess a divine spirit trapped in evil flesh.

Pilate as Jesus’ saviour

Second, the media are giving lots of publicity to Michael Baigent’s new book, The Jesus Papers:  Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History.

book cover, The Jesus PapersFor those of you who don’t recognize the author’s name, Baigent is indirectly responsible for Dan Brown’s best-seller, The Da Vinci Code. Brown lifted his revisionist account of Christian history from Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which was co-authored by Baigent in 1982.

(In fact, Baigent sued Brown for copyright infringement. He lost, in a verdict that came down just this week. But don’t feel too sorry for Baigent:  sales of Holy Blood, Holy Grail have increased by 3500% because of the publicity associating his book with The Da Vinci Code.)

Baigent’s book contradicts the Gospel of Judas at various points. In fact, let’s compare all three of the books I mention in this post.
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Anxiety dreams

February 18, 2009 at 9:24 pm (psyche)

Some years ago, I was a preacher. I had two anxiety dreams in that distant part of my life that still amuse me.

In the first, I stepped up to the lecturn after one of our elders — an exceptionally tall man — had been speaking. The microphone was way above my head. I kept jumping and jumping, but I just couldn’t grasp it to bring it down to my level.

In the other, I announced the text I was going to preach from, and then tried to turn to it in the Bible. Only I couldn’t find it. I did my best to put a brave face on things:  smiling and saying, “That’s right, it’s just past Isaiah”, or “… just before Paul’s letters” or whatever. Doggedly I flipped the pages one way, and then the other way, but I simply couldn’t find my text. Meanwhile, the entire time I had allotted for the sermon was being consumed with me searching futilely, like someone who had never opened a Bible in his life.

I don’t remember what was making me anxious on those occasions. Presumably I was preparing to speak at some event a little out of the ordinary (not the weekly Sunday sermon). Whatever the occasion was, my anxiety was expressed unsubtly in those dreams.

Hannah Wooll, Anxiety Dream(Hannah Wooll, Anxiety Dream)

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UN to censor critics of Islam

February 14, 2009 at 4:30 pm (ethics, social justice)
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Too often, Islam presents a disturbing (violent, repressive) face to the world. Islam’s vehement opposition to free speech is one of the symptoms that causes me concern:  for example, the absurd over-reaction to the Danish cartoons.

(To be clear, I didn’t approve of the cartoons, which gratuitously mocked Mohammed and stereotyped Islam. Nonetheless, it’s absurd to respond violently to a cartoon. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but cartoons will never hurt me.)

Muslim countries, by virtue of their aggressive campaign against any opposition to Islam, have cowed international institutions like the United Nations. Hence the grossly distorted condemnations of Israel at Durban.

Johann Hari alerts us to the latest development:  the UN’s Rapporteur on Human Rights has been mandated to seek out and condemn the “defamation of religions and prophets”.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights stated 60 years ago that “a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief is the highest aspiration of the common people”. It was a Magna Carta for mankind — and loathed by every human rights abuser on earth. […]

Starting in 1999, a coalition of Islamist tyrants, led by Saudi Arabia, demanded the rules be rewritten. The demand for everyone to be able to think and speak freely failed to “respect” the “unique sensitivities” of the religious, they decided — so they issued an alternative Islamic Declaration of Human Rights. It insisted that you can only speak within “the limits set by the shariah [law]. It is not permitted to spread falsehood or disseminate that which involves encouraging abomination or forsaking the Islamic community”.

In other words, you can say anything you like, as long as it precisely [matches? — Hari has left a word out of the sentence] what the reactionary mullahs tell you to say. The declaration makes it clear there is no equality for women, gays, non-Muslims, or apostates. It has been backed by the Vatican and a bevy of Christian fundamentalists.

Incredibly, they are succeeding. The UN’s Rapporteur on Human Rights has always been tasked with exposing and shaming those who prevent free speech — including the religious. But the Pakistani delegate recently demanded that his job description be changed so he can seek out and condemn “abuses of free expression” including “defamation of religions and prophets”. The council agreed — so the job has been turned on its head. Instead of condemning the people who wanted to murder Salman Rushdie, they will be condemning Salman Rushdie himself.

Anything which can be deemed “religious” is no longer allowed to be a subject of discussion at the UN — and almost everything is deemed religious. Roy Brown of the International Humanist and Ethical Union has tried to raise topics like the stoning of women accused of adultery or child marriage. The Egyptian delegate stood up to announce discussion of shariah “will not happen” and “Islam will not be crucified in this council” — and Brown was ordered to be silent. Of course, the first victims of locking down free speech about Islam with the imprimatur of the UN are ordinary Muslims. […]

As the secular campaigner Austin Darcy puts it:  “The ultimate aim of this effort is not to protect the feelings of Muslims, but to protect illiberal Islamic states from charges of human rights abuse, and to silence the voices of internal dissidents calling for more secular government and freedom.”

I’m disappointed by the statement, “It has been backed by the Vatican and a bevy of Christian fundamentalists.” Christians should not support a crackdown on freedom of speech.

I’m with Francis Shaeffer, who said that Christians (and people of other faiths) must learn to compete in the “free marketplace of ideas”. In other words, let everyone say their piece. Let everyone muster their most persuasive arguments.

The public can separate truth from falsehood, and distinguish words that build up from words that tear down.

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Premonition of death

February 5, 2009 at 9:56 pm (atheism, experience of God)

In the previous post, I mentioned that many people have had subjective experiences of God — “millions of people living in diverse societies and spanning vast epochs of human history.”

Here’s a very striking example of the sort of thing I mean:

One night Diana had a strange dream. In the dream Jesus appeared to her, dressed in a white robe, standing on a cloud of smoke. He was beckoning her to come to him, telling her not to worry, that he was going to take her with him. Then it seemed to her that the whole world disappeared from beneath her and she awoke. She told her husband about the dream the next morning, but he didn’t want to hear about it—it scared him.

The next few nights, the dream repeated itself. She told her mother, who wondered what it could mean.

A month later on September 11, 2001, Diana was at work at her investment firm in the World Trade Center on one of the top floors. She phoned her husband and mother on her cell phone after the second plane struck the tower below her. She reminded them of the dream, just before the tower crumbled.

In that moment, when events spun out of control, Diana presumably took comfort from her dream experience. Likewise, her husband and mother can cling to the message of that dream — i.e., that Diana would be received in an afterlife by Jesus — knowing that the dream was granted when Diana couldn’t possibly have known what lay in her immediate future.

Most subjective experiences are more ambiguous than that one:  for example, a feeling that God is present, offering his comfort to the individual, at a time that is peculiarly difficult for him or her.

Such experiences do not “prove” God’s existence. It’s merely data that, like all data, must be interpreted. Nor do such experiences answer the arguments against God’s existence:  for example, the well-known problem of evil.

I merely note that this sort of evidence is dismissed out of hand by atheists on the grounds that it is anecdotal. And I don’t think that’s a valid response, particularly when one considers that testimony to such experiences is widespread.

To be sure, I don’t expect anyone else to be convinced of God’s existence on the basis of my subjective experience. But such evidence does exist, and it must be reckoned with in some way that does it justice.

Atheists don’t make enough of an effort.

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The Flying Spaghetti Monster debunked

January 30, 2009 at 6:26 pm (atheism)

Ross Douthat argues that the Flying Spaghetti Monster fails to provide a parallel to Christian faith and tradition.

Both the Flying Spaghetti Monster and Bertrand Russell’s teapot in space make a great deal of sense, Douthat says,

if you believe that the idea of God is an absurdity dreamed up by crafty clerics in darkest antiquity and subsequently imposed on the human mind by force and fear, and that it only survives for want of brave souls willing to note how inherently absurd the whole thing is.

As you might expect, I see the genesis of religion rather differently:  An intuitive belief in some sort of presiding Agent seems to be an extremely common, albeit hardly universal, feature of human nature; this intuition has intersected, historically, with an enormous amount of subjective religious experience; and this intersection […] has produced and sustained the religious traditions that seem to Richard Dawkins and company like so much teapot-worship.

The story of our civilization, in particular, is a story in which an extremely large circle of non-insane human beings have perceived themselves to be experiencing an interaction with a being who seems recognizable as the Judeo-Christian God […], rather than merely being taught about Him in Sunday School. I am unaware of anything similar holding true for orbiting pots or flying noodle beasts.

Like Douthat, I tend to think the strongest argument for religious faith is the subjective one:  i.e., an argument rooted in the subjective experience of millions of people living in diverse societies and spanning vast epochs of human history.

Moreover, Douthat is right:  the Flying Spaghetti Monster misses that aspect of the equation entirely. It could only be devised by people who have made no effort to look at things sympathetically:  i.e., from within the perspective of the people with whom they disagree.

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