They worship a log and call it Diana...

[smokingboot]

Or, beware of high priests, every one of them. For the ages change but they don't.

This entry may take me a while, as I tweak it throughout the day. Last night, I listened to the much touted tv prog 'Root of All Evil,' which argues that religion is, well, see the title, and that atheism is a better(tm) and more humane moral system. I haven't seen the first, so this isn't a review, more some thoughts generated by what was presented. Many may find it tedious.



My first thought? We all know that deep research doesn't always make great tv, but with a subject like this, surely a little would help. I have nothing against people finding their own way, and whether that is with a belief or without it, it's their choice and their right to happiness whichever way; but by gum, we were presented with some deathly stupid stuff.

Yahweh of the old testament isn't very nice apparently; I would never have gleaned that from reading the bible myself. The old testament is internally contradictory; well, duh, only the most oblique of fundamentalists can argue against that. Paul's new testament stuff is nasty and sadomasochistic...yee-ess, shall I go and make the tea, or am I going to be shown something new? We know that the old testament is a terrifying, contradictory tract of lineages and stories and laws and lore, not forgetting poetry; We know re the new testament that the Council of Nicea bunged out hundreds of gospels, so only a very few are accepted.

'How can we accept one part of the Bible without accepting the rest?' was the argument, 'Can we pick and choose?' Well of course we can, even as the Council of Nicea did. These books were written by humans and humans make mistakes; what one must look for is something deeper at the core. And the argument moved around and away from the core with many an avoidant hop.

How about the basic stuff of Christianity - not Paul's embroidering, but the basic reported stuff of Christ's deeds and words? These don't get mentioned much; Christ's 'lines... whoever wrote them' are sniffily mentioned for an instant, and are not gone into with depth, for good reason; They rather crush the argument. Because whether Christ lived or not, whether the story is true or not, the principles of Love above all still hold good. The story of the poor dude who looked to be the next big thing, got framed and died in disgrace is something with which we can all empathise.

Compassion for the pain of humanity is sacred; and whether one calls that empathy the height of humanity or the humanisation of the divine, it is fundamentally important; perhaps they even merge into one, in which case, the anti-divinity/pro-atheism argument becomes redundant and we have no show.


Consider. Perhaps the one big thing we need to know about Allah is that his major epithets are not, 'The all-powerful,' even if he is, or the 'All-knowing' even if he is; but the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate. Are these not 'holy' concepts, necessary at the very basis of humanity?

The presenter wrinkled his nose in distaste at the idea of Christ's sacrifice being 'symbolic'. How 20th century 'good' this judgement is! We forget how powerful such symbols are, how many hospitals, how much help to the poor manifested through this symbol, how the ideal crystalised in people's minds as a personification, always helpful if human beings are to understand ideals, and gave rise to acts of great kindness, and more - the acceptance that great kindness to one another was the way to live.

And there is always the argument that on some level, humanity yelled out to god 'Come down and eat some of the shit you make us eat, you cosmic arsehole!' (See the Book of Job) and s/he may just have done exactly that. I'm a pagan, and I'm not sure I believe it. But I can see the comfort many people might gain from this belief, and I have been wrong before. So I'm not going to sneer at them.

The argument often arises that people should just do good because, rather than for hopes of heaven/fears of hell. And of course, that is true. But sometimes it's not about the reward, sometimes it is about being one with that ideal that sings so deep in an individual. It may be that in the moment of the act of kindness, of self sacrifice, one actually empathises so utterly with the one who gives everything, that one merges with an uberspirit of compassion. Maybe this spirit exists only in the subconscious of humanity, or maybe it has an external existance. The core of Christian teaching suggests that whichever it is, it can defeat death and change god, or change our understanding of god.

And if none of this mattered, and long ago some innocent shmoe died tortured on a cross for no reason whatsoever, that pain still resonates. Innocent people are dying today, and others don't always help; in fact, they seldom help unless it is good for them. Pity has a human face, but so does cruelty.

There is altruism in humanity but it can always do with being cultivated; and when those principles are corrupted, by powermongers or bad memory, don't blame the source, all it means is that one person created a dream, many distorted it. Worship the humanity in the eyes of your neighour and you face a very fickle god, because sometimes your neighbour loves you and sometimes he shops you to the mob, sometimes he rapes you or steals your stuff. Sometimes you call out for help and no good samaritan comes. The reason many people can find no comfort in atheism is because we all know that others are often shits; a man may kill us for his god, but more often, he'll kill us for our money or for kicks. And in that moment, you seek something else, that most divine humanity or most humane divinity.

There were so many forms of spirituality that weren't touched upon in this programme; I'm not into organised religion much, but I do get that little special glow when I hear someone who knows what they are talking about. No such glow last night.

The title of this post comes from an early Christian writer's derisive mention of paganism.

See how dumb they are! Almost makes you laugh, doesn't it? Imagine worshipping a log, when we have something so much better to offer! We'll give you bread, and understanding and real miracles! I'll explain it to you, and you'll see how right I am - I mean, how right my god is. You can see how stoooopid they are, can't you?

Or, a millenium or two later:

See how dumb they are! Almost makes you laugh doesn't it? Imagine worshipping some invisible thingwhat, when we have something so much better to offer! We'll give you bread, and understanding and real miracles! I'll explain it to you, and you'll see how right I am - I mean, how right my view is. You can see how stoooopid they are, can't you?

Can't you?

High Priests, be they of Amun, of Zeus, of Kristos, of Logos, always say the same thing. For the ages change but they don't.

Comments

[november-girl.livejournal.com]

Interesting piece. Where in the New Testament is that from?

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately,I can't give you the proper reference. This is what comes of having no bible in the house!

I assume it comes from the letters rather than the gospels or the acts. I will try to dig out a proper reference for you asap.

hah!

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I have found it. My scholarship is increasingingly crap. Thank goodness you asked! I will go back and edit my post accordingly.

The specific piece is a truncated quote, and does not come from the new testament at all, but from the fifth-century Christian poet Commodianus who describes her followers as those who 'worship a cut branch and call a log Diana'.

Commodianus' quote may well have had a source in biblical accounts that exemplify the dismissal of alien beliefs by 'high priests' of various orders, new and old. One is the havoc caused in Ephesus as described in the acts, and the other is a dotting throughout the old testament of distaste of tree worship and idolatry. Jeremiah's the one who springs to mind.

Re: hah!

[november-girl.livejournal.com]

How interesting. Explains why I didn't recognise it too!

Re: hah!

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I've spent much of the afternoon looking for the wretched thing, and couldn't get away from that confounded nuisance Jeremiah. It's been driving me nuts!

[binidj.livejournal.com]

Dawkins (and Jonathan Miller too actually) is a fundamentalist atheist and, like most fundamentalists, I find that he has very little of value to say. Fundamentalists aren't interested in discussion or into the idea that the truth may be something larger than their own opinion and thus condemn everyone else to (their own version of) hell ... because 'their' god has told them it is so. Also, because they are so convinced of their own 'rightness', fundamentalists don't choose to research the ideologies whith which they disagree ... because they're wrong.

Personally, I find that the Gospels of Thomas, James and Mary are of great value when looking at the core of Christ's message. Ironically, those were among the books that were discarded by those lovely people in Nicea ... presumably because they seem to agree that the journey to the Divine is a personal one and not dependant upon any outside human influence ... not a great notion when trying to set up a patriarchal church.

I'll take gnosis over dogma any day, thank you very much.

Time passes

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

and I still haven't studied the gospels to which you allude. Part of it is laziness, but part of it is my inability to tell via Amazon which are good translations and which aren't. Oh for a decent bookshop.

Re your comment
Also, because they are so convinced of their own 'rightness', fundamentalists don't choose to research the ideologies whith which they disagree ... because they're wrong.

I think you've nailed it exactly. From a champion of reason, I was expecting a reasoned argument, not a new form for old style fundamentalism.

Re: Time passes

[binidj.livejournal.com]

I bought this version of the Nag Hammadi Chronicles. I have no idea if it's the best available but it seems to infer rather less than other texts I've seen ... leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions.

Thank you for this

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

An interpretation that lacks inference is precisely what I'm looking for. YOu just can't tell from the site alone; personal recommendation really helps.

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

We're on the same wavelength these days. Self-styled atheists used to be few and far between; now it seems that every time I turn around someone on my friends list is describing herself as an 'atheist'. But what sort of atheist? The Wiki entry on atheism leaves me thinking that 'atheist' is as murky a descriptor as 'christian'. Hard atheism is an impossible position to defend and as dogmatic as fundamentalist chistianity. I find it difficult to have any respect for the intellectual honesty of someone who holds that view. Soft atheists are those who would at one time have called themselves agnostics. And then there are people like me who feel that it's not an issue worth arguing about because it distracts us from what we should be doing here.

The subject of the fatal stampede during the Hajj came up on an programme I was watching a few nights ago, and the moderator (who is an atheist) said how silly it was that people should die because of something that served no useful purpose--throwing rocks at the satan pillars. He saw all religious belief and practice in this way. Whatever the pointlessness or usefulness of ritual in the grand cosmic scheme of things, there's no doubt that it's a socially cohesive force of great power. It's easy to point out those occasions when this has been A Bad Thing, but not so easy to prove how often ritual and belief affect a person's daily interactions in a positive way. So, yeah. Easy to mock at the log, but ultimately rather senseless. Sometimes I feel as if atheists are beating me over the head with as much force as the christian fundamentalists do, and if they had the political power of the latter group, they'd be just as dangerous. I've read posts on the atheist comms, and they argue amongst themselves like there's no tomorrow.

Eliane Pagels book on the Gospel of Thomas is worth reading. This site is useful as is this one.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Very very interesting. Thanks for the links; which I began to explore this morning. I did read one version of the Gospel of Thomas, and noticed the below:


[Saying added to the original collection at a later date:]
114 Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life." Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven."

I find it very interesting, because of the posited dislike of Simon Peter for Mary, which has been mentioned before...and because of the mysogyny evident in Christian lore from the acts of the apostles onwards. If someone made a programme about the disenfranchisement of women from Christianity etc, and the roots of a distaste that developed into hatred and hysteria, I would be interested to see it.

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

There are conflicting opinions about whether that saying was added later and whether it's as misogynistic as it seems to be on the surface. I know that Elaine Pagels in The Gnostic Gospels thought it was misogynistic (from what I can remember from a long ago reading of that book), but others hold dissenting opinions. Jesus' view seems, from the way it's expressed, to stand in opposition to Simon Peter's, and I wonder if what Jesus is saying here is 'look, I'm going to free her from traditional roles so that she can have all the abilities and opportunities accorded to males, so nyah.' Or perhaps, as in saying 22, he's arguing that in order for anyone to enter the kingdom, the male cannot remain male nor the female remain female. Simon Peter is in for a surprise.

There have been so many programmes about gnosticism and its bad rep; surely one of them must have dealt with the status of women in the gnostic churches in comparison to their treatment in what became mainstream christianity.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure such a programme has been made, or at least, I don't recall it being shown in Britain.

I do wonder how deep at the root of Christianity the mysogyny lies; one argument I have come across before was that disparagement of matter, of the physical world, and distaste of women, for being more linked into said world via the birthing process, were intimately connected. Certainly, even among the Hare Krishnas there is an inherent feeling that women are somehow to blame for the crime of human souls manifesting, though they wouldn't phrase it like that.

For all the gnostic desire to treat matter as filth, their readiness to accept actively spiritual women, their love of Sophia, makes me sympathetic to them, though I have heard people vehemently argue that they were the WAKOs of their time.

I think it would be a very interesting programme.

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

Well, there's always Ann Brock's book on Mary Magdalene and Karen L. King's edition of the Gospel of Mary (as well as her What is Gnosticism?).

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Thanks to you and [info]binidj, I have been reading the Gospels of Thomas and Mary and a few other bits and pieces all afternoon. I'll keep an eye out for the books, and may well be reading gnostic material for years to come! It's fascinating.

The Gospel of Mary is particularly interesting, the problems with Peter and Andrew are so in keeping with the later stance of the Church. If this is true, how did Simon Peter do it? How on earth did he overshadow her, and turn his best friend's creation into a stone gargoyle squatting on the hearts of men?

And there I was thinking that Paul killed Christianity...

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

I'm not prepared to stick my neck out on the subject of Paul as gnostic, but I suspect that it may be easier to rehabilitate Paul than it is to rehabilitate what we know of Peter from NT canon or from the gnostic texts.

[binidj.livejournal.com]

It's very clear that Paul was, for the most part, writing specific letters to specific churches around the Mediterranean. I very much doubt that he would approve of his words being given the same weight as those of Christ. Paul's writings have done a hideous amount of damage to the Christian faith but I firmly believe that ultimate responsibility for this must be laid at the feet of the Council of Nicea initially and consequently from the various contributors to the current Christian canon. How they could include personal letters from someone who never knew Jesus, and yet exclude gospels from people who did, beggars belief.

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, and I think it's the historically provisional nature of NT canon that allows us to deconstruct it and still be left with something in the end.

[binidj.livejournal.com]

I am certainly part of the camp that holds with the non-misogynistic interpretation. It would seem absurdly self-contradictory that Jesus' favoured disciple (who dear old Peter is whining about) would be given so little respect. Rather I suspect that, since the gospel was translated into Coptic from the original Greek, there has been some wooliness in the translation. I suspect that the word used may have been "Anthropos" meaning "human" but of course it also means "male" which would probably have been the preferred Coptic translation at the time. The final few sentences in the Gospel of Mary would seem to confirm this approach since Levi suggests that all of them need to "... put on the pefect man ...", to become perfectly human.

[semyaza.livejournal.com]

So am I. It's the only interpretation that makes sense in the context of the writings as a whole. I don't know what the arguments are for suggesting that 114 is a later interpolation. If taken as a put down of Peter's position, it fits in nicely with the Gospel of Mary and the Pistis Sophia.

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

I certainly agree that the rendition of 'man' as the name of the species and 'man' specifically applied to the XYs can be very unfortunately translated, and the reasoning you give makes a lot of sense.

But I don't know what to make of the Gospel of the Egyptians, where phrases like 'I come to abolish the works of the female' and the equation of desire/lust with womanhood are attributed to Christ. It seems very out of keeping with the non-gender specific attitudes of the man we meet in the accepted four gospels.

One wonders if such texts gave rise to the idea of woman as a lower, more earthly creature, or whether they just expressed an idea already popular among those determined to displace the Magdalene's teachings.

An irony really, that an idea expressed in a gnostic text became taken on board so completely by the mainstream church, having discarded its orgin...while the respect for women shown in the accepted gospels got completely ignored!

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Er...that's 'origin' of course. Sorry. Must be getting tired!