"How dangerous it is in sensible things to use metaphorical expressions unto the people, and what absurd conceits they will swallow in their literals."
-Thomas Browne - Pseudoxia Epidemica-
Making sense out of someone else's religion is a bit like looking at a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don't all fit and some are taped in place or hidden under others. Take the Mary and Joseph story. We're supposed to believe that since Joseph was too old to have sex with his obscenely young bride Mary, her pregnancy was a bit of a surprise - until of course she told him that God, in the form of a bird, did the deed. The subsequent pregnancies resulting in brothers and sisters might have been harder to explain, unless the bird left some blue pills for the old man -- or unless we ignore old Occam: "entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem" which means don't make shit up just so people won't laugh at your bogus story.
That of course would have Jesus' brother Jacob the true heir to the throne of David, making him the Messiah; because after all, Joseph, from whose family the title was inherited, wasn't his real father. OK, so we don't ask and we just tape that piece in place and ignore what is underneath.
Anyway, one can choose to treat the alleged divinity of Jesus as a metaphor, which makes sense, or literally, which makes absolutely none. If you're of the latter persuasion, which didn't approach universality for many centuries into the Christian Era, (if it ever really did) the flimsiness of your construction is likely to make you touchy and humorless if not aggressively pugnacious. Imagine the fundamentalist's reaction to a poster showing A young Joseph in bed with a frustrated looking Mary and titled "Poor Joseph, God was a hard act to follow."
The Church that put up the billboard in Aukland, New Zealand simply wished to point out the absurd conceit of swallowing this literal fundamentalist interpretation. Archdeacon Glynn Cardy of The St Matthew-in-the-City Anglican church said he wanted to inspire people to talk about the Christmas story: to challenge a fundamentalist interpretation that's obviously pasted together from pieces torn from other religions, rather than swallowing the cocktail.
"What we're trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about. Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?"
Predictably, it wasn't well received by those who demand that everyone else swallow the same mind numbing potion and within hours an irate man was trying to paint over the image. Local Catholic spokesmen were up in arms and a "conservative" group called Family First was calling the whole thing irresponsible. It's nice to know that "conservatives" despise religious freedom in New Zealand as much as they do here. I mean it's one thing to be able to speak out against secular authority, but suggesting that God's own sacred chicken doesn't make half breed, wholly God children with young girls who somehow remain virginal throughout multiple pregnancies and births! What fools these mortals be!
If only I could claim such protection against people who disagree with me.
I thought Obama was the Messiah?
ReplyDeleteNow I am really confused...
He doesn't even look Jewish.
ReplyDeleteReagan was the Messiah of the simpletons, that's why Fox had to invent the apotheosis of Obama.
The stories people tell, to cover up the truth.
ReplyDeleteWilliam did not say:
ReplyDelete"entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"
What he really said:
All things being equal, if T1 is more ontologically parsimonious than T2, then it is rational to prefer T1 over T2.
In other words:
Joseph: Vous ete une allumeuse!
Mary: Vous ete un cocu!
Octy? Are you speaking in tongues again? :)
ReplyDeleteAs someone who grew up in the Christian faith (although protestant, not catholic) and who has studied theology and wrestled with many of the same things, I feel I can comment on this.
ReplyDeleteProtestants don't believe that Mary remained a Virgin, btw.
But Mary was ALSO from King David's line. Not only was the house of Joseph descended from David, but Mary was blood related.
And those of us that do believe the Christmas story don't believe God had sex with Mary. If God is the creator of, well everything, he simply could make an embryo within Mary by sheer willpower.
Yes, it's hard to believe. But it is a faith. I'm not defending all the atrocities done in the name of Christianity. Far from it. But I'm just explaining from someone's perpspective who grew up in this faith.
James, your comment and perspective are much appreciated. I hope my sarcasm was not too offensive (cephalopods are sometimes full of themselves and do get carried away).
ReplyDeleteI love this billboard. After my own absurdist heart. :)
ReplyDeleteIn the gospels, there are two lines of descent through Joseph - they don't agree and I believe some generations have been left out. There are no canonical references to Mary's line and certainly nothing contemporary to his time, but even if it were so, one does not inherit the title to the kingdom through one's mother.
ReplyDeleteThe reason Matthew and Luke included Joseph's genealogy is because their contemporaries believed Joseph was his father. They wouldn't have bothered if he was irrelevant.
Property and titles pass from the father under Jewish law and the right to be called a Jew from the mother.
One only gets references to Jesus' origins in books reputed to have been written in the 80's or 90's -- more than 50 years after his death on the cross and by Greek speaking people in another country and well after the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans. Paul, the earliest source, tells us nearly nothing of his life.
As the gospels were written by churches in countries where Greek, Roman and Persian hero-gods were prevalent, they portray Jesus with all the standard characteristics including salvation by blood and flesh eating, virgin birth, 12 apostles, death and resurrection as a divine being, etc. (Even Augustus claimed one, I think)
They are full of historical inaccuracies, mistranslated words and quotes and borrowings from older religions as well as 4th century redactions and additions such as the Gospel of Mark was subject to. Taking them as historical accounts is a matter of faith not of scholarship.
I'm quite aware of the large diversity of Christian beliefs and I'm aware that Christians who were in the line of Jews who followed Jesus and later his brother Jacob ceased to be an influence by 70 CE and that many early sects, the followers of Arius, for instance, did not believe the creed put together by Constantine's bishops and saw it as I do -- as a pastiche of sun-gods.
Arian Christians, the Visigoths amongst them, were a large presence even in the 5th century and a later sect, the Deists, saw Jesus as entirely human. Who gets to say who has the real faith since every faith is the heresy of another?
So getting back to my reason for writing this, people calling themselves Christians have spent two thousand years killing themselves over interpretations of things Jesus never heard of or had anything to do with and which views survived has mostly to do with politics, swords, torture chambers, mass executions, crusades and gunpowder. Who gets to say anything about Jesus and claim it's from a Christian perspective?
As the man asked: is it about the details of largely discredited mythology or is it about the force of love, compassion and selflessness in an angry world?
Without getting into theological arguments, in your last statement As the man asked: is it about the details of largely discredited mythology or is it about the force of love, compassion and selflessness in an angry world? I tend to side with love over details. I personally believe that Jesus was born of Mary who was of Davidic ancestry, but even if it isn't true, I believe his message of salvation, redemption, love, and of God ultimately loving us and wanting to be reunited with us is the important part. The details and wars over such details are only important in the eyes of [some of] humankind.
ReplyDeleteThen we don't disagree very much although it may seem so if you only look at the jeweled exterior we put on faith.
ReplyDeleteI maintain that it's impossible to know exactly what Jesus taught or said or did with complete confidence, but having read all the canonical and extra canonical gospels and many of the commentaries by Church fathers and current scholars, I think his message had much to do with what you say it did -- and as I've always said, it's an essential and important one from a human and ethical point of view, whether you're informed by Thomas or Mark or John Crossan or Elaine Pagels or Eusebius or Athanasius or Shelby Spong or whomever.
As to how anyone knows from what man with many, many wives one descends after nearly a thousand years, I don't know or much care. after 40 generations most of Israel and Judea and even Alexandria could have some valid claim, impossible to verify or deny -- but who cares? The world has long since given up on the idea that rulers must inherit their rule from someone appointed by God's messengers. Not all the world of course and unfortunately.
It was, in my opinion, only important to describe him as the scion of David in order to rally contemporary patriots for a war against Rome - which was lost and in the absence of that dead empire, it's irrelevant who his parents were. I think he was clear that he saw only God as his spiritual father, as did and do most Jews in a metaphorical sense. I quoted Browne in saying we make fools of ourselves in out literals and I still think this is a fair comment.
I'm a Jew, not a Christian, but I see Jesus as having had a message beyond throwing out the Romans although much of it can be seen in that context and even if he didn't, his life is in itself a message about human conduct -- our conduct and all of it is independent of his mother having had an intact hymen. Beyond the fact that many, many ancient religions had sons of virgins, the prophecy in one version of Isaiah that someday a girl would produce a male heir to Ahaz only predicts Jesus' virgin birth if you buy a very shady translation from hebrew to greek and then Latin, but I digress.
To get back to the billboard heresy, the rightness or wrongness of his message can, for me, have nothing whatever to do with Joseph's bedroom performance or whether Jacob was older or younger than Joshua, either. Jesus was about me, not about Joseph or King David or whether converts from Mithaism wanted to give up belief in a parthenogenic hero.
We're ultimately all descended from one mother and father and from a Jewish point of view, we're all sons and daughters of God as well as sons of Adam (b'nai Adam) or as the Christians translate it, sons of Man, and thus all part of the human family and I'm willing to bet Jesus wouldn't disagree that getting Israel and Judea back into a state of Grace has much to do with treating everyone as family.
Sorry to be long winded, but this is a passion of mine.