In which I make a prediction...

I submit: In the next 50 years the Catholic Church is either going to undergo some major restructuring or die out in the first world.

Bets?

In Defense of Nuance

Recently, a friend of mine linked to this video on his Facebook account. Normally I would regard a few minutes of public access TV as just a source of hilarity, but this particular piece highlights a trend that I’m sure most New Testament scholars deal with on a more or less regular basis: the Bible conspiracy theory.

To be sure, this example is worth perhaps the least mention, but it’s a pretty good strawman, so I’ll stick with it. Maybe someday I’ll let you hear my opinions about The Da Vinci Code or the Gospel of Judas. These gentlemen clearly got all of their information from the three-part internet documentary Zeitgeist, and if they bothered to corroborate, most likely simply checked whatever sources the filmmakers used. The basic point of the broadcast and the film is that the Christian traditions surrounding Christmas and Easter are well-executed lies, quite purposefully constructed by early Christian leadership as a bid for power. Their evidence is the fact that similar and often identical themes, including dates, appear in various Greco-Roman myths, festivals, and other religious sources. For example, the birth of the Roman soldier god Mithras was celebrated on December 25^th, and the Egyptian god Horus was apparently born of a virgin in a story nearly identical to the Matthean infancy narrative.

The problem with the Zeitgeist approach is that is neglects—or refuses—to ask a number of questions. It doesn’t, for example, ask when the texts were written. I have not heard the quasi-Matthean birth narrative of Horus outside of the realm of the conspiracy theory, and that version is in fact very different from the one I know, which is in Plutarch and involves the dismemberment of Osiris by Set, and Isis impregnating herself with what might be the creepiest dildo in history. I do know, however, that non-Christian religion enjoyed something of a renaissance in Rome around the 4^th century CE under the emperor Julian (it was more of a dying gasp), and the mythologies of Aesclepius and other gods were updated to more closely align with the up-and-coming Christianity. I wouldn’t be surprised if Horus received the same treatment.

The main point that Zeitgeist and its ilk miss, however, is, well, the point. Religion is rarely a cynical construction of disparate elements to get the masses addicted to the proverbial opium. Of course things are often tweaked and exploited for the purposes of power, and certainly anything that is written down is done so for a reason. But even though Mithraic cult is in many cases older than Christianity, and even if the debated Horus story predates the Matthew narrative,* so what? Religion—culture in general—is never formed in a vacuum. Every idea is based on previous ideas, and every innovator stands on the shoulders of his predecessors. Is the English language a lie because it developed from earlier Germanic and Romance languages and furthermore contains a huge number of loan words?

This probably won’t be the last time this blog addresses the injustice of equating belief with gullibility. I’ve had a hankering to read The Sacred and the Profane again, and certainly a discussion of how religion functions and why it’s important is warranted. But the important thing for now is that in mythology, “historical” and “true” don’t have a one-to-one relationship. Did George Washington cut down a cherry tree and then buckle under the weight of his own honesty, or is that just a story somebody told to help make a normal man into someone worth venerating?

Yes.

*Richard Miller argues that Matthew’s infancy narrative is actually based on the nativity story of Caesar Augustus, which itself bears striking similarities to stories about the birth of Alexander the Great. He draws pretty convincing lines between Mary and Atia at the conceptions of their respective god-sons, and implies that this was a model commonly followed for the biographies of important men. So not only do the conspiracy theorists fail at doing research, but if they had done it they would have found BETTER ARGUMENTS that they could have skewed to their purposes.

Let's Try This Again

I started a blog some time ago, under this same name, with the goal of writing about religion and culture and music and books, and whatever came into my head. I discovered, after one or two posts, that I don't have a personality that allows me to believe that there are enough people out there interested in my every thought to justify typing them all up. It's the same reason I don't have a Twitter account. What could I possibly have to say that's interesting enough to add to that narcissistic cacaphony?

After numerous failed attempts at getting back into grad school (I'm not giving up yet, folks!), I've realized something else: I am very little if not an academic. I can watch trashy movies and read books of fiction, but I want to have intelligent conversations about them afterwards. I want to work out my opinions and hear those of other people. I think of things in terms of theory and the abstract problems that don't have election-year solutions. I want to think about religion, and without the structure of coursework and term papers, this is my forum.

So let's try this again. I'll endeavor to post weekly, and to be as responsible about citations as I can. It'll be fun, I promise.