Kushana's Bible Question Page

A Very Old Good Luck Charm

Kushana Torumekia — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:03:26 GMT

This is more common than you might imagine:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26941871/

Ancient manuscripts are not always kept together, even in reverent communities.

-Kushana

Christ the Magician?

Kushana Torumekia — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:00:48 GMT

An interesting find:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26972493/?GT1=43001

In the photo you can read the words "dia chraystou" which means "through (or by) [the power of] the Gentle One."

This is not the word for "anointed" or "Christ" in New Testament Greek, but its sound-alike with a different spelling. It was a name often given to slaves which meant "kind" or "gentle". (Either by spelling mistake or in deliberate reference to that meaning, it does appear a few places in the New Testament: http://www.biblestudytools.net/Lexicons/Greek/grk.cgi?number=5543&version=kjv)

Unfortunately, the next to words (or word) are not visible. I can't find any word starting with "ogoi-" or "goist-" (using either the long or short "e" or "o" in Greek either in the New Testament Greek dictionary, above, or in Perseus.org's classical Greek dictionaries.) The word doesn't ring a bell with me, for "magician" I'd expect "pharmakos". (I could, of course, be having a momentary attack of the stupids which can affect even the best translator.)

Update: it is "goist-" or "ogoist-" (http://www.iphpbb3.com/forum/64774768nx21631/other-interesting-matters-f22/mysterious-crestou-inscription-t82.html)
Neither show up at Perseus.org -- and the word 'magician' starting with "g" is goays* (or goaytos) with a long "e". This isn't it.)

*This word appears in both Classical and New Testament Greek, however as time went on it less meant 'magician' and more meant 'juggler' or 'charlitain'.

I can find only the one article about this and thus only the one photo. I do wish they'd photograph the more interesting side of the artifact. (Hark! see above.)

(My thanks to LucidusV and Bro.Puma of the Palm Tree Garden for pointing the artifact out to me.)

Some more online discussion: http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?p=5581607
(I agree, there isn't a Greek letter that looks like "h". It could be an incomplete or badly photographed "H" ... maybe.)

-Kushana

Documentation, Documentation, Documentation

Kushana Torumekia — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 17:24:20 GMT

Archaeology 101:

Photograph first, then clear and remove the grave goods:

http://www.archaeologynews.org/story.asp?ID=325056&Title=Christian amulet that ruined my life is not a hoax

I hate to give forgers advice, but in-period silver is a must:

http://www.24dash.com/news/Communities/2008-09-18-Iconic-Shepton-Mallet-amulet-probably-a-fake

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/sep/19/archaeology.anglicanism

Tsk.

(Archaeology works on the principal of working in order, from the top down. It usually isn't wise to to pull something out from under something else important (like a leg bone) and it's generally a good idea to clear the dirt away. Yes, it's easy to get excited when you've found something -- a lot of archaeology is just clearing dirt -- but if something (like a bead or two) is connected to, sewn on to, or next to something else pulling on it without checking around could tear or break what thread, cloth, or leather (which don't survive well in most Northern European climates unless protected by a bog or other exceptional circumstances) they may be attached to.)

(Good working method also allows others at the dig to see the artifact in place as they photography or help clear the item.)

-Kushana

Dying Trades

Kushana Torumekia — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:47:21 GMT

I'm including this for the phrase "hieroglyphic typewriter" (I have to wonder if it was only the hieroglyphs that represented consonants):

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/nyregion/12tytell.html?_r=2&ei=5070&emc=eta1&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

(Six of the consonantal hieroglyphs survived as letters in Coptic. The rest are just the Greek alphabet, honest. (A bit squiggly, but Greek.))

-Kushana

Of Mediums and Muslims (Not At The Same Time)

Kushana Torumekia — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:28:03 GMT

A recent episode of the NPR radio show This American Life was a wonderful one from the perspective of religion. The first segment dealt with an a veteran of the current war who went to great length to educate himself about Islam. The last segment is about a medium's visit to a Paranormal Anthropology class. (I spent several moments wondering how I could teach such a class, myself.)

The medium's method was traditional and Victorian: she had an exotic spirit guide (Native American, not an uncommon choice in the original wave of Spiritualism, either.) (A spirit guide is a sort of otherworldly liaison who appears before the dearly departed one may hope to speak with.) Spiritualism was one of the small group of American religions which let women serve as clergy (or the equivalent of clergy); tour, speak in public, have or display educations, set religious body policy.

(If that sounds terribly quaint, recall to mind the career of women in the American presidency and vice presidency, this year. Women do not have equal standing in American public life, whichever factors one may wish to ascribe it to.)

Whenever I feel temped to laugh at some archaic feature of the past I can often bring to mind something that will seem archaic an equal distance in the future.

-Kushana

How To Do Research

Kushana Torumekia — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:23:00 GMT

Now that the school year has started up again I wanted to go over how to do research.

I know, you're looking around and noticing you're not in a classroom. You may not even be a student. However, the point of these guidelines is not 'how to get a good grade in school' it's 'how to inform yourself about any vital topic'. It is very easy go with some-things-you've-heard (or read online) or to go with some-things-a-person-you-respect said; even scholars are tempted to do this. ("At the conference the people who study that topic were saying ..." "Well, Professor August And Venerable said...")

These are more important in the age of online information. It used to be that most information had to be 1) accepted by a publisher (usually a high hurdle) 2) fact checked (by editorial staff or experts) 3) favorably reviewed (often by other experts) to make it on the buyer's list for a great number of independent bookstores and libraries. Once it arrived it 4) was looked over by the buyer, manager, or acquisitions librarian to see if it was what it advertised itself to be. Yes, publishers published rants, fluff, and nonsense. Yes, publishers, librarians, and bookstores varied widely in their standards or even specialized in non-mainstream material. Yet it was far less easy to get a book into print and far less easy to sell it directly to a niche audience (either through mail order, classified-style print ads, or infomercials.)

The internet has done many good things, it has provided a forum for information that no publisher in their right minds would print as a book:

http://www.typewritermuseum.org/

Imagine it in print: it isn't quite a price guide, a history, or a coffee-table book. With photos it would be very expensive and, as beautiful as it is, few people would be willing to buy it.

So, at any rate on to research:

1) Do I have access to the full range on informed opinions on this subject? Am I reading reasoned arguments for and against ideas about this subject based on a body of commonly agreed-upon facts? Are their superficial and detailed treatments of the topic -- am I reading things both devoted to this subject and things that simply touch on it because it colors a different topic? Is a credible perspective cut out of the conversation, either deliberately or accidentally?

2) Do these people know what they are talking about? (Online this can sometimes be impossible to sort out unless, alas, you're already an expert.) Are they pointing back to raw technical information on the subject? Do they bring any special skills or training to their work? How much of this sort of thing have they done before, and to what reception? Do most of the people in the conversation agree on what they're starting from (a photograph, a transcript, a poem etc.)

3) Who's paying them? Why are they weighing in on this? For love (or at least interest)? Are they selling something or promoting something that will (or won't) benefit them, personally? Do they have ties (family, financial, employment) to anything with an interest (or opposition) to the topic? What are their stakes, if any, in trying to persuade you?

4) How old is the source? Is this the best current thinking on the topic that takes any recent changes or new discoveries in to account? Most teachers (or college professors) put limits on how far you can go back in time for good reason: even old subjects (what Shakespeare learned in school, how the T. Rex hunted, how the Bible was written) change with new information or new thinking.

5) Who's put them in print? Did they go through any kind of vetting, evaluation, or fact-checking? What do the reviewers-who-know-what-they're-talking-about say about their work? How does this write-up compare with similar ones: is it detailed? Accurate? Complete? Not some kind of ad?

One of my hobbies is occasionally listening to Coast to Coast AM. One of the things that fascinates me about it is how people who are not experts succeed in persuading people that they are: they present themselves as one, they sound confident, they answer questions easily, they seem to have thought the subject thought, they have details. Step back: Middle-Earth does not exist. (Flamecatcher: yes, I know J.R.R.Tolkien varied in interviews and his letters on whether Middle-Earth was intended as very distant historical fantasy; but see his remarks on art and Secondary Creation in his Letters and the Tolkien Reader.) Yet a devoted fan of the Lord of the Rings could answer, confidently and in great detail, questions about any aspect of Tolkien's creation. This does not make Middle-Earth a concrete fact or any more real. Many subjects on Coast to Coast AM are like that, or at least one could as a lot of pointed questions about them, yet I've seldom heard guests booed off the show as frauds. I'm lucky: it is easy for me to get in touch with a wide range of experts (often I just have to walk down the hall) to ask if one of the show's topics is or is not scientifically or historically plausible -- and I've been carefully trained to ask all the questions I mentioned, above.

The internet is often like Coast to Coast Am writ large.

Be cautious, do your homework (especially if you aren't in school!), and read here for further questions to ask.

-Kushana, who urges you to stop looking at free, anonymous blogs for your information!

Tastes Like Chicken?

Kushana Torumekia — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:17:03 GMT

A biologist friend and I were recently talking about the 'survival' of dinosaurs. It is no longer though that modern birds are offshoots of dinosaurs but that they are directly descended from them. A bit more (potential) evidence:
http://tinyurl.com/5s2fbh

I am interested in dinosaurs because how we know about them is the same as how we know about anything from the past through archaeology: care in photographing and logging each bone found, analysis of what is around each bone (other fossils? types and ages of rock?), and comparison with similar discoveries and knowledge about the time and its context. What we have learned (since thinking these were the bones of giants or dragons) is an incredible tribute to the human ability to think things through and piece evidence together. It is a great reminder not to be lazy: to gather all the information at hand and scrutinize the details. (The details can get dull, even in my field, and it is good to have a reminder, like this article, of why such things are important.)

Any time I feel "Yes, yes *yawn* the Dead Sea Scrolls, again." It helps to think about dinosaurs. (I wonder if any evolutionary scientists think about the Dead Sea Scrolls? Probably not.)

-Kushana

Unraveling King Tut's Family

Kushana Torumekia — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:56:25 GMT

(I am sorry for the gap in posts: I have been ill and preparing for the Fall semester.)

This has been a longstanding puzzle in Tutiana which may now have a solution:
http://www.archaeologynews.org/story.asp?ID=316113&Title=Egypt%20to%20DNA%20test%20boy%20king%E2%80%99s%20%E2%80%98children%E2%80%99

For new readers: no, this is not connected to the Bible but study of the archaeological, cultural, historical context of the Bible is no different than than the study of archaeology, ancient sociology, or history, in general.

-Kushana

New Museum Lets Visitors Touch, Smell the Past

Kushana Torumekia — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:05:14 GMT

Europe seems to be much better at this than America:

http://www.archaeologynews.org/story.asp?ID=312872&Title=New German Museum Offers Sensual Take on Roman Era

Xanten then:
http://www.livius.org/x/xanten/CUT.html

Xanten now:
http://www.xanten.de/en/

-Kushana, who always wants a vacation when the new semester looms

Oldest Complete Bible Online

Kushana Torumekia — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 16:56:04 GMT

http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/

A “unique treasure” of Biblical history is to be made available online for the first time .... The Codex Sinaiticus, considered to be the world’s most important Biblical manuscript, dates from the fourth century and is thought to be the earliest, most complete Christian bible. The manuscript is, however, split up and housed in four different locations - London, Sinai, St Petersburg and Leipzig. This means that pages from one book of the bible manuscript might be housed in two or more different repositories. http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/nwh_gfx_en/ART59557.html

This means that the oldest complete Bible dates from the 300's C.E. There are individual books of the Bible (and fragments of books that are older) but none dates to the lifetime of Jesus or his immediate followers. It contains both the now-familiar contents of the Bible and the Letter of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. (You can read nice modern translations in Bart Ehrman's vol. 2 of the Apostolic Fathers, (ISBN 978-0674996083) a little green book from the Loeb Classical Library. Loeb translations usually aim for solid competence rather than literary excellence (their main value is the original language on each left-hand page), but Ehrman's translations are a pleasant exception.) Both translations also appear in his Lost Scriptures (ISBN 978-0195141825), the companion volume to Lost Christianities (ISBN 978-0195182491.)

In other words, both 'additional' books were viewed as part of the Bible by the scribes who copied Codex Sinaiticus: the idea that there should be one uniform collection of holy books (the Bible is a library of short books) took centuries to form in both Christianity and Judaism.

This is not the first time scholars have had access to Sinaiticus. The edition of the Greek New Testament that historians use is The Greek New Testament edited by Barbara Aland, Kurt Aland, Johannes Karavidopoulos, Bruce M. Metzger, C. M. Martini (ISBN 978-1598561715.) The bottom of each page contains running footnotes (see the image here). The image shows that the quoting of Psalm 41:9 in the Gospel of John 13:18 has a small variation: certain manuscripts and Church Fathers have "my" in the quotation, others (including Sinaiticus) have "with me".
If you look under the line at the bottom of the page you'll see:

____________________________________________________________
4 18 {D} greek (abbreviations of Biblical manuscripts and Biblical quotes from Church Fathers)
Cyril // greek P66

and something that looks like a curved X. That's the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the abbreviation for Codex Sinaiticus. The text of the New Testament in Greek is a patchwork of different manuscripts: our complete manuscripts are centuries newer than Christianity's first generations, our oldest manuscripts are never the complete ones. As you can imagine, Sinaiticus is one of our best resources for reconstructing the New Testament and anyone who works with the Christian Bible in its original Greek becomes very familiar with that Hebrew letter.*

(The problem of how quotes from the Hebrew Bible look in the New Testament requires two further books: the standard scholarly edition of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) in Hebrew, and the standard scholarly edition of the ancient translations of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (the Septuagint, abbreviated as the LXX.)* Early Christians -- and many Second Temple Jews -- read and discussed the Hebrew Bible in Greek (even the Dead Sea Scrolls show Biblical Hebrew was not a living language). There was no one, standard, official translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (and anyone quoting from memory can make a mistake, even an Evangelist or Church Father) so each New Testament quote tells historians which ancient translation a scribe or Church Father had (or at least how they remembered it), and what they thought it meant.)

The important thing to remember if you browse Codex Sinaiticus is that every ancient book was copied by hand (often by more than one person: try copying an entire book -- or even a long poem or short story -- neatly and uniformly by hand and you'll discover why) and no two ancient books were alike.

-Kushana
* Yes, scholars have funny abbreviations for things. The 'why' is usually an anecdote that's a good way to sidetrack a lecture. Graceful recoveries from anecdotes is a skill -- although there are masters who teach solely in anecdotes.

Gabriel's Revelation Addendum

Kushana Torumekia — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:30:52 GMT

Coast to Coast AM did a program on Gabriel's Revelation last night with Dr. Kenneth Hanson, a professor at the University of Central Florida. The school's webpage does not say where he earned his degree (a strange omission). There are at least three Kenneth Hansons in the profession: this Dr. Hanson has published either one (or no) articles in the field of Religion and the books Amazon lists under his name are popular ... and a bit woo-woo.

This is a very strange choice in a field where one's career depends on technical publications -- and it gives me little basis for judging whether Dr. Hanson is someone I would turn to in trying to understand a discovery like this stone tablet. That said, I caught only a few minutes of the question-and-answer session (not the main program) and Dr. Hanson's answers were gracious and poised.

(I do have to object to a bit of self-promotion on his website. He bills himself: "one of the world's foremost experts on non-canonical Christian texts". No, that would be Dr. James Charlesworth or Dr. Robert McL. Wilson -- or one of the half-dozen other names that come immediately to mind with an arm's length of publications for specialists in that very difficult field.)

-Kushana

Gabriel's Revelation

Kushana Torumekia — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:24:19 GMT

A colleague in Hebrew Bible Studies just forwarded this to me:

http://tinyurl.com/5gmdll

I don't know any more than I have read, here:

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/999719.html

I would like to look at a larger photograph of the stone before commenting.

Follow up:

http://tinyurl.com/5q4t2x

Despite the hair-on-fire tone, this article contains additional details:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4295804.ece

And finally:

http://www.bib-arch.org/archive.asp?PubID=BSBA&Volume=34&Issue=1&ArticleID=16&extraID=14

http://www.bib-arch.org/news/dss-in-stone-news.asp

The "Apocalypses" section of Willis Barnstone's The Other Bible (ISBN 978-0062500304) will give you a feel for this very popular ancient genre (the Biblical book of Revelations is another, more familiar, example.)

Also: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/07/1184950.aspx

-Kushana

Gnosticism and Nihilism

Kushana Torumekia — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:17:28 GMT

I always perk up when I see a reference to what I study in something in the news. I just came across this in the New York Times Book Review section:

Mr. Guterson’s hero is a decidedly more troubled character. He’s a proselytizer who is obsessed with Gnosticism and the evils of the material world, an outsider who talks about suicide and chants: “No escape from the unhappiness machine ... No escape from the unhappiness machine. ...”

(from Michiko Kakutani's review at

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/24/books/24kaku.html?em&ex=1214452800&en=b689e399d0f0a8e6&ei=5087)

This reminds me a bit of Detective Walenski in the film Dark City: a madman who thinks he sees the whole truth of things. Both characters have the wrong end of Gnosticism.

Most religions don't knock on one's door to proclaim the Bad News. (Or if they do, it's to tell you how to avoid the ghastly plight they depict.) Gnosticism was a religion about the way out of the problems and traps in envisioned; so are most religions. An ancient Gnostic might have withdraw from society, the way Mr. Guterson's character does, or have gone around wild-eyed proclaiming the Truth, as Det. Walensi does, but there the similarities end.

(I don't blame Ms. Kakutani for drawing the comparison, the idea that Gnosticism was despairing or nihilistic is part of our literary culture and one has to read a long, careful way in ancient texts to dispel that idea. Since these texts are not full of joyful paeans to the created world one has to live with them a while to sort out how Gnostics felt about being alive.)

It was popular fifty years ago to link Gnosticism to Existentialism. Modern scholars have stopped looking for any philosophical parallels past the 4th century C.E.: ancient Gnosticism was highly dependent on the supernatural and it did not elevate the individual as the focus of meaning. The point of Gnosticism was that the each person needed to be taught esoteric knowledge, often about the geography of the heavens and the beings inhabiting, it along with elaborate cosmological histories, so the soul would know its way back to God. Some ancient Gnostics did think they were a better class of human being: but ancient texts show they thought of themselves not as supermen but as people with a rigorous, dangerous and individual spiritual path before them.

Perhaps one of the most enjoyable things about studying religion is finding out how a lived religion works. Many religions with joyful theologies turn out dour adherents and many dour theologies turn out joyful adherents. Religions may ignore imposed obligations in daily life or treat what look to outsiders like limitations as reasons to celebrate. A religion's sacred texts and a précis of their method of worship must be sat with, carefully before developing a set idea of what a religion is (or was) like in the world.

-Kushana

In Memory of George Carlin

Kushana Torumekia — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 17:02:28 GMT

And now, the seven famous words:

stercus, urina, concubitus, pudenda, mammae.

Or rather, five of them – I only have a student dictionary with me, designed to make looking up naughty words difficult. I’d consider the Oxford Latin Dictionary (ISBN 978-0198642244) the last word and Adams' Latin Sexual Vocabulary (ISBN 978-0801841064) to get the exact nuance of ancient slang, but I don’t have either at my desk.

It used to be the custom to translate the risqué passages of any text into Latin – I never quite understood why: 1) this made them easier to find 2) most schoolboys knew Latin. (I suppose this kept the passages from casual readers, women, and men of lesser social standings. But not, necessarily, from children. Odd.)

The fact that we know dirty words in any dead language depends greatly on what’s left of the language and what kind of books were preserved. Biblical Hebrew can be very earthy -- but it speaks in metaphors and euphemisms. Ancient Aramaic preserves some anatomical terms, but it would be a difficult language to truly curse like a longshoreman in. Greek has such a long written history that suppressing all its vulgar vocabulary would be a monumental act of censorship: even the Greek of the New Testament has a few colorful words. (Which are usually softened in most translations.) Roman humor, satire, popular novels, political pieces, graffiti, and medical texts preserve nearly the range of vocabulary found in English. I have not read all the preserved literature of Coptic but between the literature on daily monastic life, recorded fulminations against sinners, and magical texts that had both medical and romantic intentions (including jealously, i.e. wishing ill on the parts of a straying lover), there is a good start on that language’s off-color words.

All these languages preserve enough religious vocabulary to resurrect religious oaths, including my favorite (straight from an ancient novel by Petronius), “Iuro per deos deasque!” "By all the gods!", a very Roman sentiment: they took care never to leave any deity out. (Must of Roman religion rested on not creating offense.)

I also wanted to take a moment to speak in praise of heresy. Carlin was an atheist and outspoken critic of absurdities, wherever he saw them:

‘‘The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things — bad language and whatever — it’s all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition,’’ Carlin said in a 2004 interview. ‘‘There’s an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It’s reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have.’’
http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/1019509,CST-NWS-xcarlin23.article

Heresy is necessary even for religion, itself. Many word religions owe their existence to unacceptable departures from the dominant religions of their day: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity (and every Monophysite and Protestant form of that same faith), and Islam. The mystic Al-Hallaj was hung for saying what came unacceptably close to pantheism, but a historian of religion sees in it the mysticism that occurs in every religion and often says doctrinally unacceptable things. To quote William James' famous remarks, mystics feel:

1. Ineffability.- The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in love one's self to understand a lover's state of mind. Lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment.

2. Noetic quality.- Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.

These two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the sense in which I use the word. Two other qualities are less sharply marked, but are usually found. These are:

3. Transiency.- Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. Often, when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; but when they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance.

4. Passivity.- Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. This latter peculiarity connects mystical states with certain definite phenomena of secondary or alternative personality, such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the mediumistic trance. When these latter conditions are well pronounced, however, there may be no recollection whatever of the phenomenon and it may have no significance for the subject's usual inner life, to which, as it were, it makes a mere interruption. Mystical states, strictly so called, are never merely interruptive. Some memory of their content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance. They modify the inner life of the subject between the times of their recurrence. Sharp divisions in this region are, however, difficult to make, and we find all sorts of gradations and mixtures.

("Lectures 16 and 17", The Varieties of Religious Experience. I thank Dr. Nielsen for letting me borrow his copy of the book.)

None of this makes for the kind of rational analysis that goes into any tradition's orthodox systematic theology.

I would say that heresy is also necessary for any form of study. If you want to read the Book of Acts in a literary light -- presuming that the author of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts had complete freedom to portray Paul as he liked (Acts 16:9-10), to put any words in his mouth that best suited the literary standards of his time (Acts 22), to move him about on the map of the story as he liked (as Luke does with Phillip in Acts 8:39-40) -- then you will reach conclusions that might not always sit well with seeing the Book of Acts as a wholly accurate, thoroughly divinely inspired text. (What, then, would be the purpose of trusting Luke with two books of the Bible and the first history of Christianity? Why not have these texts fall from the sky if his humanity, experience, education, and literary skill would be so totally set aside?)

The first requirement for any kind of thought or inquiry is an open mind. No education can exist without it. This process requires that dangerous, offensive, unacceptable, and unspeakable ideas must be open topics. Traditional posits of the power and greatness of the divine present something that cannot be harmed by human doubts or questions. People feel protective of their own ideas, practices, and doctrines but I have never seen anyone’s spiritual or ethical life grow without the presence of questions and difficulties – no more than a child grows when they are sheltered from everything confusing or difficult.

Blasphemy, heresy, and atheism are vitally important things. In the history of ideas, suppressing one person or group’s blasphemous suggestions is often futile: the same idea will occur to others, independently, whether they another generation or place’s mystics, thinkers, or satirists. Every idea invites its alternatives: someone will eventually ask if X must be so, if it was always so, if it could ever change, and if it is the whole truth of the matter. Every successful religion has learned that it has neighbors who ask inconvenient questions, saints who see strange and transcendent realities, and comedians who will find in the status quo an ideal straight man.

(Carlin did live long enough to learn he would receive the Mark Twain Prize, this Fall. For those who think Carlin did something new and shocking, I warmly recommend Twain’s complete works.)

-Kushana

Gas Prices

Kushana Torumekia — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:02:48 GMT

I am sorry for the recent hiatus: I abruptly found myself in the market for a new car. Since the average price of gas in Los Angeles is $4.62 per gallon I first looked a a hydrogen fuel cell car (but I live just outside the current test market) and most of the electric cars fit for urban and freeway driving were either expensive or a year or two away. I bought a conventional car, but with a great deal of grumbling -- which will continue every time I open the gas cap.

(For those accustomed to the plentiful public transportation systems of most urban areas, I present to you the Los Angeles subway system: if it isn't on the four points of the compass you'd better drive there.)

-Kushana, cursing everyone peripherally associated with current gas prices and the internal combustion engine, and the horses they rode in on. Hm, a horse can gallop at the low end of highway speed...

Mailbag: Ghosts and the Bible

Kushana Torumekia — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:42:17 GMT

Now that the semester is over my helper has been back, intermittently. Recently they rolled out from under the blog's workings to comment that some readers had been lead to the webpage by queries phrased as, "What about ____ and the Bible?"

If you're curious about what topics are mentioned in the Bible, I can recommend two good sources:

1) a print concordance to a particular translation of the Bible (it is best if the translation the concordance matches the Bible you are looking ate, but since once of my fascinations is translation differences I am always interested to see how different translations phrase things.)

Some samples:

The Concise Concordance to the New Revised Standard Version by John R. Kohlenberger (ISBN 978-0195284102)

Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of The Bible by James Strong (ISBN 978-0195282764)

The New American Bible Concise Concordance by John R. Kohlenberger III (ISBN 978-0195282764)

Or, online (this is no endorsement: none of these pages replicate good Bible research software for the range of translations, ease of searching, and working with the original languages):

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/r/rsv/

http://www.blueletterbible.org/

http://bibleresources.bible.com/bible_read.php

http://www.biblestudytools.net/

(Bear in mind that sites put interpretive resources and helps close at hand because that's what they want you to read (or the resource is out-of-print and thus postable.)) I am warmly in favor of reading broadly and making up one's own mind: there is a far broader world to how the Bible is (and has) been read than any of these sites suggest.

I know of only one ghost story in the Bible, a nice old-fashioned séance (in this case very old, and less a Victorian séance than necromancy (magic for summoning (or conversing with) the dead), RSV 1 Samuel 28:7-21:

Then Saul said to his servants, "Seek out for me a woman who is a medium, that I may go to her and inquire of her." And his servants said to him, "Behold, there is a medium at Endor." So Saul disguised himself and put on other garments, and went, he and two men with him; and they came to the woman by night.
    And he said, "Divine for me by a spirit, and bring up for me whomever I shall name to you."
    The woman said to him, "Surely you know what Saul has done, how he has cut off the mediums and the wizards from the land. Why then are you laying a snare for my life to bring about my death?"
    But Saul swore to her by the LORD, "As the LORD lives, no punishment shall come upon you for this thing."
    Then the woman said, "Whom shall I bring up for you?"
    He said, "Bring up Samuel for me."
         When the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a loud voice; and the woman said to Saul, "Why have you deceived me? You are Saul."
    The king said to her, "Have no fear; what do you see?"
    And the woman said to Saul, "I see a god coming up out of the earth."
    He said to her, "What is his appearance?"
    And she said, "An old man is coming up; and he is wrapped in a robe."
    And Saul knew that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground, and did obeisance.
    Then Samuel said to Saul, "Why have you disturbed me by bringing me up?" Saul answered, "I am in great distress .... therefore I have summoned you to tell me what I shall do."
    And Samuel said, "Why then do you ask me, since the LORD has turned from you and become your enemy? ...."
    Then Saul fell at once full length upon the ground, filled with fear because of the words of Samuel; and there was no strength in him, for he had eaten nothing all day and all night. And the woman came to Saul, and when she saw that he was terrified ....

Note: many cultures, including the Ancient Near East and the Classical era, though the opinions and comfort of the dead were tremendously important. It's only human to worry about the welfare of those for whom nothing more can be done and part of what makes a culture is how they treat and relate to their departed.

-Kushana

Cats and Dogs Living Together

Kushana Torumekia — Tue, 27 May 2008 23:48:10 GMT

The Book of Revelation is an apocalypse . This does not necessarily mean ‘a book that describes the end of the world’ but rather ‘a revelation’, an opening of the divine scope of history to one prophetic human being. It belongs in a category with other books like the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, some of the literature attributed to Enoch, the Shepherd of Hermas, and part of the Apocalypse of Adam, and Zostrianos (both found in the Nag Hammadi Library in English and other translations of that mostly-Gnostic library.) It is important to realize that the Book of Revelation is not alone in all Antiquity and it is important to read it beside its older and younger neighbors. It is also important to set aside the attitude that "this is part of the Bible": all of the books mentioned above were regarded as sacred scripture by someone during the era of Christianity’s formation and neither Judaism nor Christianity had a set Bible which now non-Biblical books could be compared against.

All of these books are terribly weird, in their own ways – so look for common features. Who is receiving the revelation? What makes them the appropriate recipient and messenger of it, among all the great and holy figures of sacred history? Who gives the revelation? An angel? A great heavenly figure whose nature is not specified? Another great and holy figure from an earlier time? Is the book about a literal trip to heaven, as Paul said "in the body" (2Cor 12:3)? Or is it in the form of a vision? Who are the good guys and bad guys in the revelation? Given that some of them are a kind of revenge story, why would the readers of each book have a beef with the folk destined for punishment and perdition? When was each book written, for whom, and why would that book go over so well in its own time and place? How do these books borrow from each other?

Each of these books had a human author. (It’s possible, and very likely with most of the books mentioned, that the author was not the recipient of the journey or vision – but someone else.) Each of these books says something about the time they were written in – what its author and readers feared, what they wanted, whom they hated. Pretend you are reading a political tract from 1700's Europe or a rebellion against the Chinese emperor, where allegory or religious code often cloaked a political message – how does each of these works look, when read that way?

(The Oxford Annotated Bible is a good source for cracking the contemporary political language in the Biblical Book of Daniel and Book of Revelation: for the other books there isn’t a one stop shop, but a good translation should have an introduction and footnotes that will help unravel some of their political and historical contexts.)

-Kushana

Tuning in the Past

Kushana Torumekia — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:06:16 GMT

I have a radio on my desk. It has a wooden cabinet, on its face are four things: a dial, a speaker, and two knobs. It was made by one of the older radio makers that is still in business. It is one of those radios with no digital readouts: turn the back lit dial, move the needle, drift through an ocean of soft hisses to a station.

There is an entire hobby of doing this (at least on the AM band.) One would listen for distant stations (especially at night), drop them a line that you heard their signal, and get a bit of memorabilia in return. I have other, digital radios -- I like being able to push a button to jump to the AM news station or my favorite dish washing music -- but I tend to only listen to stations that have buttons assigned to them, and I can miss new stations for months at a time.

Our campus library is currently moving more towards electronic databases. One of my favorite things to do when I first arrived at college was to just walk through the newly put out magazines: I felt how wide the world was, how many things there were to know, what was being done in my major and in others. This is a difficult effect to get from online databases (even if someone offers highlights of new articles someone else is still doing the selecting) and there are no pictures. (One of the charms of archaeology is, "What is that?") It is easier to find specifics and more difficult to find generalities, and more difficult to keep up with the the broad range of fields I need to know at least something about. "So, what's going on in Egyptology these days?" is not a question an electronic database can yet parse gracefully or easily.

Let me explain: research in my field comes in two stages, the surveying and the digging. (By surveying I do not mean the exacting work with levels and GPS, but the initial walkover looking for walls and shards.) In surveying you have a vague idea "Wait, maybe Paul's city is the key to his letters! Library -- tell me everything you know about ancient Tarsus!". At this stage of research you want to know as much as possible, you want to look at different fields of study (geography and topology, maps, every ancient document that mentions the city, history, urban planning, classical archaeology, religious history.) This narrows things down -- there are areas with no information, there are areas of irrelevant or unhelpful information, there are subjects that have been done to death -- until you get to the digging stage. "Wait, maybe the religious history of Paul is the key to his letters! Let's look at local religions in Tarsus and Paul's attitudes towards Gentiles!" Here databases are a great help in excavating this very specific subject. However, limiting the surveying stage makes it difficult to get to the digging stage: and success in the second stage often depends on success in the first ... time and resources are better spent on a likely prospect (a wall, a refuse heap, a craftsperson's workshop) than on hastily selected portion of featureless dirt.

I fear our campus library is, once again, in the grip of a 'modern idea': the last one was microfiche. (Now I don't think I could find a microfiche reader in the entire building, although I haven't tried in about a decade.) I suppose I should ask someone what happened to our holdings on (or converted to) that format ... and I will resist the temptation to bring along an ordinary, quite usable, book purchased by the library during the same era. Each kind of technology has its advantages and disadvantages: I wish these could be weighed more carefully before only one way of doing things becomes primary.

-Kushana
P.S. The end of the semester has weighed on my more than usual, I wanted to wait to write this so it would neither be too curmudgeonly nor an all-out rant.

In a Classical Mood, Part IV

Kushana Torumekia — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 02:09:27 GMT

Some of the grand anthologies on the history of Fantasy do go back to the Classical era. So this article struck me as highly nifty:

Dr Ni-Mheallaigh is looking at the work of 2nd century AD writer, Lucian of Samosata, who wrote True Histories, a travel narrative that includes an account of a trip to the moon and interstellar warfare.

Read the rest at:

Research To Investigate Links Between Ancient Greeks And Modern Science Fiction

-Kushana

In a Classical Mood, Part III

Kushana Torumekia — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:57:06 GMT

Why yes, I am catching up on my archaeology reading. Care to join me?

Within the building's courtyard, de Grummond said, is a freestanding sandstone platform that likely served as an altar. A few feet away, she and her students unearthed "the most fascinating find of all -- a pit filled with burnt offerings for the gods.

"In all, the pit contained approximately 10 vessels, some miniature and thus clearly intended only as gifts for the gods," de Grummond said. "On the other hand, several of the vessels were quite large, including one storage vessel, probably for grain, and a huge pitcher, probably for wine. There also were little cups for drinking and a bowl for eating, as well as a small beaker of the type that holds oil or spices. All of these vessels were ceramic, some ritually broken and but with most or all of the fragments buried together in the pit.

So far, not terribly strange -- none of this would be odd at a Greek or Roman religious site.

Also of great interest to de Grummond was the discovery of some 10 iron nails deposited in the pit, all in an excellent state of preservation.

Not so common!

"These reflect what we know from ancient texts in Latin that note that the Etruscans treated nails as sacred, and regarded them as symbolizing inexorable fate," she said. "They had a ritual practice in regard to their deity Nurtia in which they would hammer a nail into the wall of the temple each year as a tribute to the goddess. We cannot yet be sure about the cultic significance of the nails of Cetamura, but they may well relate to the passage of time and thus to the sacred calendar of the Etruscans."

It's always wonderful when texts and archaeology match up: it's less common than you might think.

De Grummond is a leading scholar on the religious practices of the Etruscans, a people whose culture profoundly influenced the ancient Romans and Greeks. "The Religion of the Etruscans," a book written and edited by de Grummond and Erika Simon, another expert in classical archaeology who served as the Langford Family Eminent Scholar in Classics at FSU in 1999, was published last spring. De Grummond soon will release another book, "Etruscan Myth, Sacred History and Legend."

De Grummond said she hopes to continue excavating the Cetamura sacred area, and building on nearly a quarter-century of knowledge that she has gathered there.

"It is a bit eerie to have excavated something so central to my own lifelong interest in the myth, religion and rituals of the Etruscans," she said. "Without a doubt, this is one of the most exciting of the discoveries I have experienced."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/060630095037.htm

I think that's wonderful: all scholars dream of such good fortune!

-Kushana

In a Classical Mood, Part II

Kushana Torumekia — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:41:29 GMT

I was reading an article by Mike Elgan about a gadget and came across this paragraph:

Yesterday I visited the town of Sounion ... a pleasant seaside town that happens to contain a spectacular ruin: The Temple of Poseidon.

We all know Poseidon as "God of the Sea." But a quick search ... en route ... revealed so much more detail .... I learned that the dude was also God of Horses and Earthquakes, brother of gods Zeus and Hades, husband of Amphitrite, who was the granddaughter of a titan by the name of Ocean. Took me two minutes to learn all this ... and another 30 minutes to learn a great deal about Poseidon by drilling down into the material. I also learned about the site -- for example, that it was mentioned in Homer's "Odyssey" and that an Athenian King named Aegeus jumped off the cliff there, giving the Aegean Sea its name, according to legend. And a lot more.

By the time I got to the site, I had all the information I needed to really understand and appreciate what I was looking at.
http://blogs.computerworld.com/why_the_amazon_kindle_is_a_tourists_best_friend

This makes me feel strange, like a creature from another century. I suspected a well-educated American from a hundred years ago would have known all of those things: I did. (I might have missed the Odyssey reference and just where Aegeus made his leap from ... but the rest would require no gadget.)

I recently went to a library booksale where a good portion of their Classics were being sold off. I know, knowing who Hesiod was is not a vital job skill in the current economy nor necessary for a proper education in an age when other matters form our common frame of reference. (I think: just what is our common frame of reference is is still up for grabs. I am beginning to think it is online in-jokes with a shelf life of a few months ... as a historian I begin to wonder just when we will cease to understand each other, not because of a language barrier but because there will be too many private subcultures.)

I'm sorry: library sales make me morose, especially when they are selling off titles I'd put in the "Um, you might want to keep that" bin. Technology and its attendant gadgets have some wonderful advantages ... but they remind me of something my first Latin teacher taught me: "Kushana, memorize this verb rather than writing out a chart and carrying it with you 1) you may not always have the chart 2) it will forever be a crutch to you. Once you know this verb, you will know it -- you will spot it in every passage you read and you will recognize its kin in other languages."

She was right: to this day I can do exactly those two things (and my Latin textbook is in a box in the back of a closet on the other side of the continent.)

I have consistently discovered that the moment I need to know something is the moment when the book I need (or Google) is unavailable ... and online information is often no better than what a lot of people sorta think. (Accumulate that over the process of learning about an entire subject and you get, well, a mess.)

-Kushana, the morose and cranky

In a Classical Mood, Part I

Kushana Torumekia — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:39:47 GMT

If you know the stories from the great polytheistic religions (Egyptian, Hindu, Greek or Roman) you probably think of them as being set: the pantheon, the roles and attributes of the gods and goddesses, their deeds, their marriages and children .... in the study of the history of each of these religions, scholars learn that each of these things changed and developed. Over time human ideas about religion always change: a city can acquire a new divine patron, new theological ideas develop (or are borrowed or adapted from neighboring religions), ideas about the divine change to address the changing circumstances and requirements of their human adherents.

That said, learning about changes in the great polytheistic traditions always takes me a bit more by surprise than learning about changes in the great monotheistic ones. I've studied the traditions with one deity longer, maybe, and have become used to the idea that each of those traditions developed. Religions with many deities tend to think and develop in somewhat different ways: they are less likely than monotheism to latch on to the idea that there is one right way (although they can be extraordinarily exacting about doing ritual correctly), that trait alters how they respond to theological competition, to pick one example. That said, the history of religion is the same field, no matter how many deities (or none) a religion has.

An example of change in ancient Greek religion:

The fact that the ash altar to Zeus includes early material dating back to 3000 BCE suggests that the tradition of devotion to some divinity on that spot is very ancient. The altar is long standing and may in fact pre-date the introduction of Zeus in the Greek world. We don’t yet know how the altar was first used, and whether it was used in connection with natural phenomena such as wind, rain, light or earthquakes, possibly to worship some kind of divinity male or female or a personification representing forces of nature. - Dr. Romano, the dig director
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080123114601.htm

The idea that Zeus arrived in Greece and that he was proceeded by an unnamed nature deity is a wonderful and mind-bending idea. (Although, I imagine, no surprise to Classicists: forgive me, I try to keep up with as much as I can but there is far, far too much to follow.)

-Kushana

An Experiment with Online Video: Tirekicking Religions Part 3

Kushana Torumekia — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 16:35:04 GMT

I was listening to last night's Coast to Coast AM interview with Irene Spencer, a member of a polygamous sect. What most interested me was the hindsight she had on her own experience and the common patterns in the callers who criticized her: either they tried to say she'd never been a 'real' or 'good' member of the sect, so her account was invalid; or nitpicking small errors of chronology to put her entire account in doubt. (I cannot add a direct link to the interview, but she was promoting her autobiography Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife (ISBN: 978-1599951584.))

It reminded me again of the point that any religion or idealistic group can become manipulative or overbearing. Although this video is a bit goofy, it does illustrate the traits of a religion that has become too interested in money or power:

www.youtube.com/v/mnNSe5XYp6E&rel=0

Idealistic groups and religions are excellent at directing interest, funds, and dedicated effort towards doing good (feeling the hungry, building schools and hospitals, addressing social ills, funding art, achieving spiritual goals whose efficacy are difficult to measure by social sciences criteria) and such efforts often need an organization to see them through. However any religion, either trusted and established or newly-founded, can become distracted by the prospect of attention and wealth -- if more than a few things in that video seem familiar then research the group you are in (or joining) using sources outside the group (including the accounts of former members.) (Look less for claims that the group will spiritually doom you and more for signs of abuse or mismanagement: the history of religions which claim that all others are spiritually worthless is lengthy and somewhat dull.)

-Kushana

Finding the Past

Kushana Torumekia — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:18:09 GMT

A nice article on American archaeology:

Nick McComas ran his gloved hand across the dirt, sifting soil through wire mesh, looking and feeling for what stayed behind. A rock, a root, then something white -- a chip off a plate no one's used for 100 years.

"If you find one thing, one little thing, that's the hook," Kat Ward said.

http://www.archaeologynews.org/story.asp?ID=276846&Title=Clues%20to%20the%20past

I used to look around the back yards of the homes I grew up in looking for arrow heads (or, far less likely, dinosaur bones). I found "surface finds" -- chips of colorful china designs, a clay marble, part of a sports trophy. Surface finds are actually a clue that a place might be worth test pit -- and that, as the article says, determines if a place is worth a formal, large-scale, gridded dig. My early homes were built on places with centuries of habitation (including Native American -- little of America isn't) but I doubt any of them was worth a full-scale dig.

-Kushana

Stonehenge!

Kushana Torumekia — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:04:09 GMT

Need I say more? Like the pyramids, this site brings up those perpetual archaeological questions: who built this place? How? For what purpose? In both cases we know some of the answers, but I imagine most people with a fascination for the past have gone through an era of being interested in both sites.

A new dig asks exactly these questions:

To be the first in over sixty years the new dig will last until the 11th of April in hopes of finding who built Stonehenge, for what reason, and why they brought the magnificent stones all the way from Wales.

“The excavation will date the arrival of the bluestones following their 153-mile journey from Preseli to Salisbury Plain and contribute to our definition of the society which undertook such an ambitious project,” Wainright said. “We will be able to say not only why, but when the first stone monument was built.”

Stonehenge has a very confused and extended past, and is much more than just a group of rocks. In fact, at the beginning, it is believed that the structure was actually made of wooden posts. It was only in the third phase of Stonehenge, estimated to be around 2600 BC that the stones made their appearance. But that only leads to the next question; where did the stones come from?

source: http://tinyurl.com/2njbog

(Original Link: www.archaeologynews.org/story.asp?ID=275581&Title=Stonehenge%20visited%20by%20Archaeologists)

(To those who are prone to insert aliens into their answer I have two replies: 1) the simplest possibility is usually the best answer, 2) give human being some credit.)

-Kushana

Hearing the Bible in Different Ways

Kushana Torumekia — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:51:40 GMT

I would like to draw your attention to two recent radio interviews:

The first with James Cone:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89236116

(Read his book God of the Oppressed (978-1570751585). Drop everything and read it, even if nothing about it seems interesting to you. It is one of the best books on theology that I have read in the past 20 years.)

A second program where two scholars discuss Black Liberation Theology:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88744273

In the debates about Rev. Jeremiah Wright's remarks both those who seek to defend and condemn him seem to know little about the denomination that ordained him or the theological tradition he works from. When I see a lack of knowledge about religion in public life my first wish is to provide context and information, no matter what is being argued about. I am sorry to see a (yet another) discussion where neither side seems to know much about the topic at hand. Please, before you dial that radio call-in show or click the discussion board's "reply" button, take a deep breath and at least 45 minutes to look into the background of what is being discussed -- it will make you look frightfully informed and intelligent and it will bring a brief pause to mutual slapping-each-other-with-fish. (It may even shift the whole conversation.)

Liberation Theology, in all its forms, is nothing surprising to anyone who's been in the field of religion (ministers, professors, theologians, those who look at the subject in fairly large bookstores...) for any of the past 30 years -- and all of us would be delighted to see any topic in our field more widely discussed and known about.

Remember: context and background first; opinion second.

-Kushana

Tax Time

Kushana Torumekia — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:40:42 GMT

I have an entry that I've written-and re-written every few days: I cannot boil it down into one post I like.

So, for today, archaeology news:

http://tinyurl.com/2lr4eb

(Original link: www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1205420740611&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull )

This is the tax mention in Matthew 17:

[24]When they came to Caper'na-um, the collectors of the half-shekel tax went up to Peter and said, "Does not your teacher pay the tax?"
[25] He said, "Yes." And when he came home, Jesus spoke to him first, saying, "What do you think, Simon? From whom do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their sons or from others?"
[26] And when he said, "From others," Jesus said to him, "Then the sons are free.
[27] However, not to give offense to them, go to the sea and cast a hook, and take the first fish that comes up, and when you open its mouth you will find a shekel; take that and give it to them for me and for yourself.

(Revised Standard Version from http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/r/rsv/rsv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=4563978 )

(The Greek actually says "Didrachma" but it had to be paid in this specific coin (scroll down to the last coin on the page, the one found at the dig.)) Think about this, you're required to pay a tax in currency that is not in general circulation. That's what the money changers were doing at the Temple, they were a currency exchange. (For deep background, see footnote 16, here, from an article by Dr. Manfred R. Lehmann.)

Who was Vespasian? He is the Emperor who makes Josephus' histories so difficult, as historical sources -- always ask "Who is writing this account?" "What interest(s) do they have in it?" and "Who is paying?"

-Kushana

The Long View of Scholarship

Kushana Torumekia — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:16:42 GMT

I was talking with a woman after a recent talk and she said she was surprised to hear that theologians argued. Theologians certainly argue: all academics argue. A street sweeper sweeps, we argue. We are trying to persuade our colleagues that we have found the best solution to something ambiguous or unsolved in what we study, they (naturally) question and test our work and suggest other solutions. Eventually, over decades, sometimes over most of a century of examination and testing someone’s answer comes to stand as the best solution.

I explained simply that we argue, we certainly do argue, and laughed. Then I added that I am not a theologian. A theologian tries to discover the nature of God by reasoning about what God has shown us of the divine’s nature and intentions ... to me that is a bit like studying electrons. But unlike electrons, God cannot be photographed. God cannot be interviewed nor invited here to explain divine actions; unlike Job we cannot query God directly. (Personal revelation is not a form of scholarship; not in academia in the 21^st century, and none of us knows the formula to bring about an epiphany, an appearance of God on earth.)

I am not a theologian, I am a historian – because I can know some things about other people. I can examine the clothes they wore, I know how they cooked lunch, I know how they sent their children to school, I know what they argued about in the tavern, I know what they felt about their rulers and the news of their day. I can bring a sock, a cooking pot, a textbook, a bit of tavern graffiti, or a political tract into a room (or, more often, a good photo of any of the above) where we can all look at it and talk about nalbinding, or cooking residues, or abedeciaries, or Latin slang, or why it was a bad idea to back the wrong person in a time of Roman imperial instability. We will try to find an agreement on what we’re seeing, usually everyone agrees fairly quickly, and then we apply it to whatever problem we’re trying to solve (the history of Egyptian tapestry, nutritional deficits in a certain set of bones, etc.) There the arguments start.

The nice thing about the long view of scholarship is that we do resolve these arguments. Sometimes we dig something up that provides a necessary piece of the puzzle, sometimes one of us points out that a parallel (with solution) exists in a slightly removed place or time from what we’re examining, sometimes we arrive at the best answer we can have given what we know.

Another man asked me if the Gospel of Thomas was true. I had to talk with him a bit to get at what he was asking: he meant "Was the Gospel of Thomas a revelation on par with the Biblical gospels?" I don’t know – I’m not a Church Father and I can’t go back to my office and place a call to God about what was meant by burying a small stack of books in the desert.

I think the people who used those books thought they were important, holy books (there was no Bible, yet). (There is a minority argument that whoever assembled and used the Nag Hammadi Library meant them as a gallery of things-not-to-do, spiritually – but there is nothing in these expensive, carefully maintained books that show any sign of disagreement or contempt. (i.e. no notes in the margin saying "And this part is particularly awful.")) All I can do is look for the tracks of what other people did in the past: I cannot read the mind of God.

-Kushana

Now With Cats!

Kushana Torumekia — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 16:42:45 GMT

The dragons of the aether have eaten my post.

I will now include cats: http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/funny-pictures-cats-computer-blue-screen-death.jpg

Or vaguely Aramaic mystical names: Chnoumeninorin!

-Kushana