Da Vinci Code
Dan Brown has resurrected a heresy that rattles the Church
Jesus had a baby, yes Lord. Jesus had a baby, yes my Lord. It sounds pretty blasphemous, put like that, doesn’t it? The only reason I dare to begin with those words is that they represent the beliefs of growing millions of otherwise sane British adults. Yup, folks, we all seem to be swallowing the new gospel. You on the Tube, madam, turning the pages with such narcosis that you miss your stop: you believe it, don’t you?
You, sir, sneaking your dog-eared copy off to the loo for a quick fix – you think there’s probably something in it, too, hmmm? According to astonishing statistics from the Roman Catholic Church, 22 per cent of British adults have now read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, and of those an amazing 60 per cent believe that, yeah, it is probably the case that Jesus indeed got married to Mary Magdalene and sired a line of descendants.
By my maths, that means that there are at least six or seven million people in this country who now believe that it’s true: that for two millennia the Roman Catholic Church has been engaged in a desperate struggle to conceal the existence of the Christ family, and that they are probably all over the place: behind the fish counter at Sainsbury’s; creating loaves for Hovis; causing people to rise from their beds in hospital.
They could be anywhere. They could be reading this paper. They could (gulp) be you. There is something in the logic of Dan Brown’s book that has convinced millions that they have really uncovered the biggest, the spookiest, the most chilling conspiracy in history.
Never mind the autoflagellant cowled assassins and the idiotic anagrams. This story has clearly touched something in the popular psyche, and if you need any evidence, look at the global panic that book and film seem to have induced in the Roman Catholic Church.
In the Vatican, the papal portavoce has described this pot-boiler as “shameful and unfounded lies”. In India, no fewer than 200 Christian organisations have succeeded in having the film blocked from release, and even here in placid little Britain the officials of Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, have called for it to carry a “health warning”.
You may think that the Church is barmy to get so hot under the dog-collar, and you may think that Austen Ivereigh, the Archbishop’s public affairs man, has forgotten the golden rule of his trade.
Why, you may ask yourself, are they rising to the bait? And yet the more one thinks about the doctrinal message of The Da Vinci Code, the clearer it is that the Catholics are right to think this a seditious text.
It is not just the sex. Among Dan Brown’s assertions is that Jesus had a long, loving and matrimonial relationship with Mary Magdalene, a former prostitute. This is, of course, a vaguely embarrassing allegation to make about a man who has always been taken to be a model of chastity, but it does not seem in itself a fatal blow to Christianity.
They were married, says Dan Brown; there is no suggestion of fornication; and plenty of other early Christians were married and had children. No, it is not the News of the World aspect of the book that worries the Church, or which is now filling the shelves of WH Smith with Da Vinci-ana. It is the simple possibility of Christ’s reproduction that is so mesmerising; and, in discussing this idea with such awful readability, Dan Brown has reopened a controversy that the Church thought had been settled in ad325.
The reason this piffle is such a howling hit is that it resurrects the great unspoken doubt in the minds of all Christians, that has existed ever since the doctrine of the Incarnation. It is about whether Christ can really be man and God at once.
If you walk round the Louvre at a less frenzied pace than Tom Hanks and co, you will notice a fascinating gradual change in the depiction of the ancient gods. As the human race gains in intellectual self-confidence, the image of the divine becomes more and more anthropomorphic.
Egyptian jackals, Babylonian curly-bearded cow-hoofed centaurs: they all give way to the human-shaped gods of the Greeks and the Romans until finally, at the very moment when the Romans have first declared that their emperor is a god, a Jewish heresy also announces that God has been made man in the form of Christ, and from then on there were those who couldn’t get their heads round it.
If he was a god, how come he died? And if he was a man, how did he rise from the dead? From the very beginning of Christianity, there were Gnostics, who contested the full divinity of Christ, and by the third century AD the chief exponent of this type of view was a Libyan Christian bishop called Arius.
The Catholic Church said Christ was of the same substance as the father, coeternal. No, no, said Arius, he couldn’t be of the same substance; he was just similar; he was just a chap really; not homoousios, but homoiousios.
Arius spoke for everyone who has ever said that “Jesus was a really great guy and a great teacher, but I don’t think he was really the biological son of God”. He had many supporters, and the wrangle engulfed the Christian world until Constantine settled it rather incompetently at the Council of Nicaea in 325, and the doctrine of the Trinity was pronounced.
But the controversy rumbled on for hundreds of years, until it produced its most potent successor, Islam, which regards the idea of the son of God as blasphemous.
By depicting Jesus as a man who fathered, Dan Brown is making the same objection as Arius, and putting his finger on the logical problem in the doctrine of the Incarnation. Are the descendants of Christ meant to be divine? Patently not. But why not, if Jesus was God?
The answer must be that Jesus was not of one substance with the father, and that is why the Catholic Church is so rattled. This book may be bilge, but it awakens an ancient and distinguished heresy. Dan Brown is the new heresiarch, and I vote that he, the Pope, Austen Ivereigh and the rest of us convene a new Council of Nicaea to settle the matter.
221 Comments
But are you proposing a God who changes? [Jack Target May 31, 2006 08:27 AM]
I don’t actually have a problem reconciling perfection with change, in fact I find it easier than reconciling perfection with immutability. ? [Jack Target May 31, 2006 11:43 AM]
I am not quite sure what it is you don’t follow in my reasoning.
If it is that you “do not have a problem reconciling perfection with change”, and therefore the notion of change with God, then let me be more specific, and say that it is the God of the Scripture I am referring to (Mal 3:6 “For I [am] the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed”), and also of St. Anselm of Canterbury (or Aosta, for Italians, or Bec, for the French), that is God is “that than which nothing greater can be thought”.
Of course it is perfectly possible to conceive of God as changing (Eraclitus did, Idealist Philosophy, and Brahmanism), but I claim that a God that changes, is not distinguishable from his Creation, in fact the very notion of creation vanishes with a changing God.
I believe in a Creator God.
I believe in God and Creation.
I do not believe I am God (or part thereof)
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When I asked if you were proposing a God who never changes I was simply seeking clarification, not challenging the point
“Two only are the possibilities” for example, what makes you say this? Why not:
The Eternal Son has had his human part since ‘before’ creation. Or rather the human part has always been a part of the Eternal Son (and also therefore of God). This is totally harmonious with a view of God which places him outside time. As such God would not need to change to accomodate this aspect, and likewise the humanity of the Son would not need to be absorbed into the divinity.
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I never assumed you were challenging my point, what makes you assume that? I simply put close to each other two sentences of yours, the first of which seemed to imply surprise at a possible proposal of mine of “a God who changes”; the second, on the contrary, shows “ease” with “reconciling perfection [and, therefore, presumably, God] with change”.
Now you seem to prefer to go back on the idea of a God that does not change (unless you have another, special, copyrighted meaning for the adjective “eternal”), and propose the audacious idea that “the human part has always been a part of the Eternal Son”. This is not contradictory, of course, but let me insist that it makes the idea of Jesus receiving his humanity from his Mother incomprehensible. Also, it voids all possible meaning of the Resurrection.
In sum, as I concluded in my comment at 10:36 AM:
«[Either] it is God’s immutability which is questioned, [or] it is the very reality, value and meaning of Resurrection which dissolve into a haze.»
You tackled the two horns of the alternative one at the time: if you tackle them both together, you realize that to have a “God [Father and Son, and ...Spirit into the bargain] outside time” and, also, a Jesus Christ with a real human nature (therefore subject to change), whose Resurrection is not simply “going back, unchanged, where he eternally belongs”, is impossible.
Very much like wanting to “have your cake and eat it too”.
I have chosen: I believe in real Resurrection. The alternative would be a purely theatrical Resurrection.
If it is not clear, I can expand on the notion of “theatrical Resurrection”. But I wonder if this exchange is not getting a bit exorbitant: I wonder what Boris Johnson and the other forum participants may think.
Maybe we can continue with our personal e-mails?
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Why are people getting so upset? It’s just a novel!
I watched one of the many television programmes on the subject at the weekend where, after spouting on about the DaVinci Code for an hour, the ‘expert’ admitted he hadn’t actually read the book he was commenting on. People are making a lot of money out of all this controversy.
As for Christians and the church getting so upset, why? You are just playing in to the hands of conspiracy theorists.
And anyway, the more enlightened know that Jesus was a Buddhist ; )
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Personal e-mails might be better! Feel free to use mine:
warphueal (at) hotmail (dot) com.
A theatrical ressurection is actually fairly in-line with my beliefs in the sense that you’ve meant it. However, only in the same way that human free-will is ‘theatrical’. I think we make the choices with free-will, and the choice is entirely ours (influenced by outside forces though of course), however I also believe that God knows the outcome ‘before’ it happens. This doesn’t mean that he makes the choice for us. Likewise I think the ressurection was innevitable and pre-destined, but to me that doesn’t make it any less miraculous, wonderful, or important.
I don’t think that wanting to ‘have my cake and eat it too’ is necessarily an argument against the validity of my points. Those who believe in Grace are most definitely having their cake and eating it too in my opinion! Christianity is full of those examples.
I think my scenario tackled the bull by both horns perfectly well, preventing the necessary questioning of immutability but without necessarily diminishing the importance of the ressurection. I don’t agree that the Eternal Son (which by the way I’m still undecided on, I like your idea a lot) eternally having a human part should necessarily preclude him gaining it from Mary. It all depends on our understanding of God’s understanding of time.
Anyway, unless anybody intervenes to say they’d like to see it, I’ll expect your next reply by e-mail.
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Jesus was clearly gay.
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Lol, clearly…
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raincoaster said:
May 23, 2006 06:43 AM | permalink
The book’s not all that unavailable, given that it’s selling on Amazon at the moment for $11. The Wikipedia entry, however, is unencouraging. Here is a better introduction to the Ahmadiyya religious movement.
To RAINCOASTER
Apologies for the time delay; a better wikipedia search is “Khwaja Nazir Ahmed” who died in 1968; unlike the Nazir Ahmad you refer to who is still alive and very much illiterate.
The Turin Shroad was hailed as a major dicovery about 25 years ago, the cloth was verified and carbon dated to conincide with the time of Jesus; the existence of 120 pollen were found on the cloth that are known to thrive in the middle east 2000 years ago; 22 of which no longer exist. The only thing that remained was that there needed to be conclusive evidence that the shroud did indeed wrap Jesus when he was removed from the cross; this was further enhanced by observing that there were indeed thorn marks on the forehead of the person and wounds on the wrist and ankles in line with a person who had been crucified. However when observations suggested that the blood marks from the wounds were not in lines but in pulses suggesting that the person covered in the Turin shroud must have had a beating heart when removed from the cross; there was a self imposed blanket ban by the media, then suddenly a few years later it was announced that the Turin Shroud was a hoax produced in the 18th century. Strange that even in the 21st century it is impossible to reproduce such a shroud ! Obviously the implications of Jesus being alive after crucification has immense, where does that put Father , Son and Holy Spirit ?
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Bashir Ahmad,
However when observations suggested that the blood marks from the wounds were not in lines but in pulses suggesting that the person covered in the Turin shroud must have had a beating heart when removed from the cross; there was a self imposed blanket ban by the media
Where did you find about “blood marks in pulses”? I searched the web, to no avail.
The cloth was verified and carbon dated to coincide with the time of Jesus
This is in sharp contrast with the official results:
Please clarify
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I wonder what Boris Johnson and the other forum participants may think. (Servetus)
Well, I for one can say that I barely understand a word that you’ve written. It simply doesn’t make any sense to me. Take the following quotation:
In Jesus has been fully expressed God’s Wisdom, which had already been deployed at Creation. The Word, or God’s Wisdom, is therefore not a distinct person neither from God, nor in God, and it is not even a “project” of Creation, but an eternal attribute of the Eternal God.
I can take more or less every word in this and ask: what does it mean? What is meant by ‘Word’, ‘God’, ‘Eternal’, ‘person’, etc, etc? It’s all Greek to me. It employs language that has little or no contemporary currency, but is instead the private and arcane language of theologians.
My own view is that, if you wish to express ideas clearly, you should do so using simple English. And if you wish to introduce some concept – like “Word” as opposed to “word” -, you should explain in simple English what this means.
Fundamental ideas in physics, like ‘mass’ and ‘length’ and ‘time’ can be explained in simple English. Ultimately, what cannot be said in simple English cannot be said at all.
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Servetus
I recall reading this in the “New Scientist” around the late 1970′s probably circa 1978. A quick serach on the Internet brought me to as site aptly named “Shroud of turin.org”. Here are some snippets from their site; there are many other sites to chose from.
April 1976: Release of Report of the Turin Scientific Commission, with the first public information of the pollen findings of Dr. Max Frei, who claims that the Shroud’s dust includes pollens from some plants that are exclusive to Israel and to Turkey, suggesting that the Shroud must at one time have been exposed to the air in these countries.
TWO YEARS LATER
September 30, 1978: The STURP team arrives in Turin. Some of their luggage is lost and Italian Customs authorities hold all eighty cases of their test equipment, refusing to release any of it. One particularly delicate piece of x-ray equipment needs to be filled with liquid nitrogen or it will be damaged beyond repair. Access is denied.
Early October, 1978: En route to Turin to take part in the Second International Symposium on the Shroud, Professor Harry Gove stops off in Oxford to inform Hall of Oxford about the possibility of radiocarbon dating the Shroud. Although Hall does not yet have an AMS facility, he expresses himself and his colleagues as being very enthusiastic to ‘get in on the act’.
TEN YEARS LATER !!
July 27, 1988: (Wednesday) The Oxford laboratory commences its first run of its Shroud sample and controls.
August 8, 1988: The Oxford laboratory completes its Shroud work.
August 26, 1988: The London Evening Standard carries banner headlines declaring the Shroud to be a fake made in 1350. The source, Cambridge librarian Dr. Stephen Luckett, has no known previous connection with the Shroud, or with the carbon dating work, but in this article declares scientific laboratories ‘leaky institutions’. The story is picked up around the world.
September 18, 1988: Without quoting its source, The Sunday Times publishes a front-page story headlined: ‘Official: The Turin Shroud is a Fake’. Professor Hall and Dr. Tite firmly deny any responsibility for this story.
October 13, 1988:(Thursday) At a press conference held in Turin, Cardinal Ballestrero, Archbishop of Turin, makes an official announcement that the results of the three laboratories performing the Carbon dating of the Shroud have determined an approximate 1325 date for the cloth. At a similar press conference held at the British Museum, London, it is announced that the Shroud dates between 1260 and 1390 AD. Newspaper headlines immediately brand the Shroud a fake and declare that the Catholic Church has accepted the results.
ANOTHER TEN YEARS ON !
April 11 & 12, 1997: Shortly after 11 p.m. fire breaks out in Turin’s Guarini Chapel, quickly threatening the Shroud’s bulletproof display case. Fireman Mario Trematore uses a sledgehammer to break open this case and the Shroud, in its traditional casket, is taken temporarily to Cardinal Saldarini’s residence. Signs of arson are found in the Royal Chapel, the walls of which are very badly damaged. Also damaged are the whole High Altar end of the cathedral and the part of the Royal Palace directly adjoining the Chapel.
April 14, 1997: In the presence of the Cardinal and several invited specialists, including Mme. Flury-Lemberg, Professor Baima-Bollone and Dr. Rosalia Piazza of Rome’s Istituto Centrale del Restauro, the Shroud is brought out from its casket and its condition carefully examined. It is found to be completely unaffected by the fire. It is taken to an undisclosed place of safety.
AND NEARLY ANOTHER TEN YEARS LATER !!
May 2006 Da Vinci claims new discovery !! ??
—————————–
If the shroud was indeed a fake produced in 1350; remarkably the points of injury were anatomically correct, the nailing marks were above the wrist and not in the palms as was consistent with medically naive 19th century images of Jesus on the cross. Remarkably the 1350 fake cannot be copied in 2006.
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idlex,
I find your comment rather ironical, bearing in mind that, after Jack Target’s first reply, I had written:
Anyway, “Word” is the English equivalent of the Greek Logos (the New Testament was written in Greek): it corresponds, more or less, to the Hebrew term Hochmah and it means means, in Greek, something like “wisdom”, “logic”, “rational principle”.
So “Word” (capitalized not because it is personal, but because of its special meaning) means that the World (forgive the capitalization, again) is not chaotic but was created according to an intelligible, rational plan.
As for ‘God’, ‘Eternal’, ‘person’, they may have “little or no contemporary currency”, and this, I am afraid, is not a progress, but a serious problem.
Are you sure you can explain everything in terms of ‘mass’ and ‘length’ and ‘time’ (and ‘energy’, ‘atoms’, ‘protons’, ‘electrons’, ‘quarks’, ‘barions’ etc.)? Can you really express Quantum Physics and Relativity in “simple English”?
And can you include in your “simple English” what really matters in life: ‘love’, ‘freedom’, ‘courage’, ‘plans’, ‘meaning’, ‘guilt’, ‘forgiveness’?
I wonder…
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Are you sure you can explain everything in terms of ‘mass’ and ‘length’ and ‘time’? (Servetus)
No, of course not. I was simply giving an example from physics where there are clear ideas of mass and length and time, which can be explained in English. I wasn’t suggesting that one can explain absolutely everything with physics.
And can you include in your “simple English” what really matters in life: ‘love’, ‘freedom’, ‘courage’, ‘plans’, ‘meaning’, ‘guilt’, ‘forgiveness’?
I’d say all those words are simple English. There may be some ambiguities about exactly what is meant by ‘love’ or ‘freedom’, but I think their meanings are fairly clear to most people.
As for ‘God’, ‘Eternal’, ‘person’, they may have “little or no contemporary currency”, and this, I am afraid, is not a progress, but a serious problem.
Well, it’s certainly a problem for someone like me trying to understand someone like you. Words like ‘God’, ‘eternal’, ‘Word’, and such are words that I don’t use, and nor does anyone I know use them. In an increasingly secular society, they have largely fallen out of use.
The same comprehension problem is to be found elsewhere. There is a deep divide between people who study mathematics and science, and those who study the humanities (The Two Cultures of C. P. Snow). In many ways I’m simply pointing at another deepening divide of incomprehension – between the secular and the religious.
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Bashir,
thank you for your reply, (though I cannot access the website you mention – I tried shroudofturin.org and shroud_of_turin.org)
You suggest the idea that the Carbon 14 dating was not entirely “neutral”. Actually, come to think of it, October 13th was the day of Fatima’s Great Miracle, 1917, and of the mass arrest of Templars, including Jacques de Molay (in 1307). Maybe, a “symbolic revenge”. But maybe, a bit too much of a conspiracy theory!
In your “snippets” I can find no answer to my question about “blood marks in pulses”, though. Which is the most puzzling one, because, of course, by implying that the “man of the Shroud” was still alive, it would void the possibility of considering the Shroud a “witness” to the Resurrection.
Of course, if the person was still alive, it could be that Jesus did not die after all, and spent more time with Mary Magdalene? Or maybe, it was, again flipping Jacques de Molay, so Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas were right after all. But this, of course, is not even conspiracy theory: it’s plain silly.
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Words like ‘God’, ‘eternal’, ‘Word’, and such are words that I don’t use, and nor does anyone I know use them. In an increasingly secular society, they have largely fallen out of use.[idlex]
How sad, too bad.
Just make sure you have enough “ballast” so as not to fall pray to the first Wiccan wind.I have known of staunch rationalists, nay, scientific reductionists who …
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There’s no way I’ll fall prey to any Wiccan: I’d only start asking them difficult questions.
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You need a philosophical approach, to ask “difficult” questions.
‘mass’ and ‘length’ and ‘time’does not work, I am afraid.
And simple English no good.
And C.P. Snow suggested the gap needs to be eliminated by finding a common ground, not by eliminating one side of the gap.
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And simple English no good. (Servetus)
Why? If you open a dictionary, you generally find the meanings of English words expressed using simpler English words.
If you are saying that your terminology is inexpressible in simple English, however do you explain its meaning to anyone? And indeed, how was it first explained to you?
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In the meantime, Servetus and Jack Target managed to exchange 12 posts between.
And, with some clarifications, we perfectly understood each other’s Q&A’s. And we are carrying on via e-mail (we are sparing you all that!).
I know how you feel, because I had “simplified” my world exactly like you have (and I was even proud of it): I reduced my language, and everything “beyond” was simply “irrational” or “meaningless”.
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I know how you feel, because I had “simplified” my world exactly like you have (and I was even proud of it): I reduced my language, and everything “beyond” was simply “irrational” or “meaningless”. (Servetus)
You’re being patronising, Servetus. You don’t know anything about me. You don’t know whether I ‘simplify my world’ or not. You don’t even know whether I dismiss anything beyond my supposedly simplified world as ‘irrational’ and ‘meaningless’. In fact, you’re ascribing views to me that I don’t hold.
All I have said here is that I don’t understand what you’re talking about, and asked if you can express yourself in simple English as opposed to theological jargon. Apparently this is impossible.
If Jack Target understands you – and it seems he does -, then good for him. It suggests he’s more of a theologian than I am.
Perhaps Jack can express an opinion on the matter, and say whether he also thinks it is impossible to render theological ideas into simple English. I’m fairly sure that he won’t be patronising in his reply – because he never has been before.
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All I have said here is that I don’t understand what you’re talking about, and asked if you can express yourself in simple English as opposed to theological jargon. Apparently this is impossible.
Words like ‘God’, ‘eternal’, ‘Word’, and such are words that I don’t use, and nor does anyone I know use them. In an increasingly secular society, they have largely fallen out of use.
I may be patronizing, idlex, and I do apologize for making comments about your thoughts and intentions. But you are changing your position like a moving target (oops, the pun was entirely unintentional!).
On the one hand, you ask to explain, in “simple English”, words which, on the other hand, you say you are not interested in and “[you] don’t use, and nor does anyone [you]know use them.”
Sorry, mission impossible, at least for me.
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Theology is definitely an interest of mine – in fact I’m going to study it at uni next year.
I’m afraid that language was necessary for me and servetus to make any headway with the discussion, although it was a bit exclusive, hence why I had no objection to switching to e-mail. It’s unfortunate that we had to carry on what was essentially an academic theological discussion here, but I was very interested indeed with the point he was making, and wanted to hear more. His case is for a heresy which I know nothing about, and since many would say that “heresy is just another word for independent thought”, I wanted to learn more! In adition, it attempts to tackle the Trinity, which is one of the stickiest and most complex of all theological issues.
The technical language really is necessary though I’m afraid, it’s a bit like trying to have a productive discussion of quantum mechanics without using any terms introduced after GCSEs. It’s possible, especially if you use them to define new terms, but it takes a long time and gets quite confusing if cramped into a single discussion.
On top of that, this discussion focusses on the Trinity, which in my mind anyway is already one of the most complex theological issues there is ( 1+1+1 = 1 ?).
To give you an example of the unwieldiness, here is a translation of one paragraph into plain English:
My position … is that there is only one God, YHWH, who is also the Father of Jesus, not from eternity, but in the domain of time, as the Gospels (Matthew and Luke in particular) most obviously suggest. Jesus is is true God and true man, inasmuch as He joins in Himself by generation the Divine nature of God his Father and the human nature of his Mother, the Virgin Mary.
–
“My view is that there is only one God. This God is the same as the Hebrew (Old Testament) God, called YHWH, and who I believe fathered an entity called Jesus. Jesus was not “eternally begotten” as the Nicene Creed states
(by which it is meant that: Even though he is begotten from the father, the process does not take place within time (or therefore at a point in time). In fact even though the Son is begotten of the Father, he has also existed ‘for as long’ (a misleading term for an eternal being!) as the Father. For as long as the Father has existed, so has the Son.)
but rather was begotten at a certain point in time, as the Gospels (Matthew and Luke in particular) most obviously suggest. Jesus is both wholly divine, and wholly human. By this I mean that even though he is both divine and human, he is not shared between the two, because he lacks nothing of either. This is acheived by fusing his divine nature (inheritted from his Father), YHWH, with his human nature, which he gained from his mother, the Virgin Mary.”
I think that given a couple of readings it should be possible to understand that passage given a fairly basic Sunday School knowledge of Christianity, and an intelligent mind. It is however much longer and much harder to absorb than the ‘technical’ passage (that is if you’re already familiar with the technical terms!). Obviously it is unreasonable to expect anyone and everyone to be familiar with uncommon theological concepts, in the same way that I am completely baffled when my friends discuss art or music in an academic way. It was our fault for carrying on a conversation like that in an inappropriate place.
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It was our fault for carrying on a conversation like that in an inappropriate place. (Jack)
There was no fault in that. The problem started when Servetus asked what anyone else on the thread thought, and I piped up and said I didn’t understand a word of it.
And thanks for having a shot at rendering one passage into rather more plain English. Clearly you at least believe that it can be done.
And contrary to Servetus’ presumptions about me, I’m actually rather interested in theology – but mostly in the sense of trying to understand the differences between the many varieties of Christian heresy that seem to have arisen in the first few centuries AD – simply to try to get a better grasp of history, which includes, after all, the history of Christianity, whether one believes in it or not.
I actually have a Christian education, but RI was as unfathomable then as it is now. But I did not end up dismissing it all as irrational or meaningless, as Servetus tells me: I ended up concluding that I simply didn’t understand.
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On the one hand, you ask to explain, in “simple English”, words which, on the other hand, you say you are not interested in and “[you] don’t use, and nor does anyone [you]know use them.” (Servetus)
Where did I say that I was “not interested” in these words? Where? Nowhere.
I don’t habitually use these words simply because I don’t really know what they mean. But that does not mean that I am not interested in finding out. For the most part, when somebody asks me what some word means, it is my custom to do my best to explain (always assuming I know what it means) using simple English.
And, in argument, I generally try not libel people by putting words into their mouths that they never said, nor ascribing to them views that they don’t hold.
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Servetus
There are many references that the “heart was beating” covered by the Turin Shroud. Try reading Rodney Hoare’s “Testimony of the Shroud” particularly the chapter on Forensic Evidence (Ch 5). There is also reference in Kurt Berna’s publications. There are many other authors, mainly disaffected clergy who write under an alias including Kurt Berna who have overcome their initial disbeliefs, to investigate further; some have been imprisoned for their writings, other ostracized. It would be interesting to have Professor Hall and Dr Tite at Oxford revisit the subject that they investigated back in 1988 and state their current views some twenty years later. The pollen expert who examined the shroud was the Swiss Police criminolgist Dr Max Frei who did the pollen analysis in 1978.
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idlex,
This is what I said:
I wonder if this exchange is not getting a bit exorbitant: I wonder what Boris Johnson and the other forum participants may think. [Servetus,May 31, 2006 04:42 PM]
It was meant to be an act of consideration towards “Boris Johnson and the other forum participants”, because I felt (and obviously Jack Target also felt), that we we hijacking the forum into a very specific debate, that nobody else was partaking of.
This is how you interpreted it:
The problem started when Servetus asked what anyone else on the thread thought, and I piped up and said I didn’t understand a word of it.[idlex June 2, 2006 02:53 AM]
I realize more and more, also from my own, undue and improper, patronizing towards you, how easy it is to misunderstand and to be misunderstood. For my part, again, sorry
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Servetus
“I can find no answer to my question about “blood marks in pulses”, though. Which is the most puzzling one, because, of course, by implying that the “man of the Shroud” was still alive”
In response to your above query.
Kurt Berna has written extensively about the shroud and the fact the body was alive. He was imprisoned in Germany for his blasphemous views during the 1970′s. Andreas Faber-Kaiser the Spanish theologian has also written and produced several papers on the subject of Jesus being alive when wrapped with the shroud. Interestingly in 1978, a certain Cardinal Ratzinger had been assured that the Pontifical Academy of Sciences would not be excluded, when deciding on the three institutes permitted to date the shroud. Sadly they were excluded by the archbishop of Turin. Cardinal Ballestreo was also advised that only three laboratories were to be kept in the project: those of Oxford,Zurich and Tucson in
Arizona. This order was passed on to these laboratories by Cardinal Ballestrero on 10 October, 1987. The rest is history. Whether you believe their findings or not is conjecture; particularly in current times, when spin on Niger Yellow cake, false WMD reports and a whole lot of fantasy can be passed of as fact.
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For my part, again, sorry
(Servetus)
No harm done:)
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Jack,
thank you for making the effort (and it proves to be a laborious one!) of providing a sample of “vulgarization” of my theological “shorthand”. I give my approval to your “translation”. With the following specifications: the divine nature that Jesus received from God, his Father, does obviously not include eternity “in the past” (it does instead include life everlasting, starting with the Resurrection). Also, I would still prefer the expression “joining” (or “uniting”) the two natures, to “fusing” them. Or, as the Chalcedonian Council expresses itself: “without separation, yet without con-fusion”. Of course, with the further note that we cannot really form an adequate concept of how this union, without confusion, of two natures in one person is possible, or what it really means: Jesus is unique, we lack terms of comparison.
As for this:
On top of that, this discussion focuses on the Trinity, which in my mind anyway is already one of the most complex theological issues there is ( 1+1+1 = 1 ?).
We should not really be taken by mystical awe at the arithmetically impossible equation. It is easily debunked by saying that the {3 persons = 1 God} is not much different, and not more difficult to understand, than {3 persons = 1 family} or {3 persons = 1 company}, which are more familiar equations.
The problem is not the concept of Trinity, it is whether it is founded in the Scripture or not. (see my “Trinity and Incarnation I”). In my opinion, as I have already claimed, it is not, in fact it is a spurious “infection” from Egyptian Hermetism, with Greek philosophy as a probable “carrier”.
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If you really are worried about sinister organisations then
Here is URL you might like to look up
http://www.pro-test.org.uk/March.aspx
Our next march will take place on Saturday, 3 June in Oxford. The march
will start at 11.45am at the corner of Parks Road and Broad Street -
please assemble at 11.30am – and should last about 90 minutes. Speeches
will take place at Parks Road and outside the lab building site. This will
be another major, peaceful protest in support of animal research and the
Oxford lab, and a great chance for you to stand up for science. Please
spread the word as widely as possible and encourage friends, colleagues
and relatives to participate. You can download a poster here. Why not
BYOB: Bring Your Own Banner! If you are interested in helping to steward,
get in touch!
We are keen to link up with supporters from outside Oxford. For
information about travelling to Oxford for the march, or if you are
thinking about bringing along a group of people to participate, please
contact us for any advice you may need.
Pro-Test looks forward to seeing you there!
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Bashir,
thank you for the information. I did a “google” with the three relevant names you quote: Kurt Berna, Andreas Faber-Kaiser, Rodney Hoare.
The only website that has them all is the Italian Wikipedia (see http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studi_scientifici_sulla_Sindone). They are all dismissed as fantasy-schoolars, in particular Kurt Berna (real name Hans Naber) who is actually presented as a mix of visionary and con-man.
The wild hypotheses of all three (including personal visions of Jesus, Jesus in Kashmir, and Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus that hear Jesus cough in the tomb) are based on a serious “forensic” question: from a dead body no blood comes out. But this question has been amply explained.
In fact, the separation between “blood and water” (blood and serum), witnessed in Jhn 19:34-35, is nothing mystical: quite the opposite, it is the confirmation that Jesus was really dead.
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The problem is not the concept of Trinity, it is whether it is founded in the Scripture or not. (see my “Trinity and Incarnation I”). In my opinion, as I have already claimed, it is not, in fact it is a spurious “infection” from Egyptian Hermetism, with Greek philosophy as a probable “carrier”. (Servetus)
One thing that struck me of my visit to Egypt, and my few studies of Egyptian mythology, was the number of triple deities. For example, Osiris-Isis-Horus, Ptah-Sekhmet-Nefertum, Amun-Mut-Khons, etc. All are families consisting of father, mother, and son. And in some systems of counting, the first real number was regarded as 3, with 1 and 2 not being regarded as ‘true’ numbers. I wondered back then whether the idea of a trinity was an Egyptian export.
So also with Isis. Some Egyptian sculptures of Isis with the infant Horus on her knee are strongly reminiscent of those of Mary and Jesus.
But does this possible origin render it ‘spurious’?
And is Egyptian Hermetism the same or something entirely different from the religion[s] of pharaonic Egypt?
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But does this possible origin render it ‘spurious’?
It does indeed (of course with reference to the Biblical God, YHWH), and that for two good, complementary reasons:
And is Egyptian Hermetism the same or something entirely different from the religion[s] of pharaonic Egypt?
The relation between Egyptian Hermetism and the ancient Egyptian Religion is similar to the one between Neo-Platonism and the Greek Mythology and Religion: only a sublimated, pseudo-conceptual essence remains.
I suggest, for a quite impressive reading: P.F. Beatrice, The Word “Homoousios” from Hellenism to Christianity ( http://plaza.ufl.edu/dmorgan/Articles/homoousius-churchhist-v71-i2-p243.pdf ). It proves quite conclusively, IMMO, how the keyword of the Council of Nicea (325 CE), Homoousios (that is “of the same substance, referring to the relationship between the Father and the Son), imposed on the recalcitrant assembly of bishops by Emperor Constantine, is entirely non-biblical, non-Christian, and borrowed from the Hermetic tract Poimandres and from other Egyptian sources (ancient oracles). I quote here the most disconcerting one, bearing in mind that it comes from an entirely non-Christian source:
It sounds “Christian”, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t, it is purely 100% heathen.
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Christianity certainly took a lot from the other religions it came into contact with – mostly from the greeks. You would expect quite a bit from the egyptians too given their proximity and ties to Judaism, although I think there’s surprisingly little (may be wrong on this point).
Since we’re throwing things into the pot, and since this discussion is currently on egyptian and christian mythology/religions, there’s an interesting thing that I’m very keen on:
At a very similar time to the exodus in the old testament, the whole of egypt temporarily (for 20 years) became monotheistic. It’s worth bearing in mind that traditionally the exodus has been discounted due to a complete lack of archaeological evidence for it in Egypt. Have a read about it on Wikipedia, it begins with the pharaoh Akhenaten, whose article includes a fair bit on it. Some strange things particularly stand out:
- The very powerful priesthood went along with it completely, despite the loss of power, as did the entire population.
- After presenting it in the usual egyptian way, by identifying the new god with old ones and then replacing them, Akhenaten then did something completely unheard of, he claimed that the Aten was the one and only true God, the first example of monotheism we have.
- Idols were banned, and even the representation of the Aten was always accompanied by a “hieroglyphic footnote”, insisting that the representation be seen as just that: a representation. This was also unique, but familiar to us of course from judaism.
- Just before all this, there were serious plagues across the whole of Egypt.
- “The impact of Akhenaten’s religious reform, albeit introduced in steps, is hard to overstate; it is equivalent perhaps to a new Pope declaring an obscure African saint the supreme God of Catholicism, building a new Vatican City somewhere in Canada, and abolishing all bishops as well as banning the symbol of the Cross, defacing all churches to remove all reference to Jesus, and banning any personal veneration of Jesus. It is a measure both of Pharaoh’s great power, and of the extraordinary circumstances of the time that an equally shocking and dramatic transformation was achieved even temporarily, for about twenty years.” – from the Wikipedia Atenism article.
- At a similar time, the volcano Thera is thought to have erupted
However, even more significantly as far as I’m concerned:
- During this time, there is a reference to a tribe in slavery called the Apiru (or Abiru, or Habiru – often speculated to be the forerunners of the Hebrews), wreaking havoc in the Egyptian empire, who then disappear from the egyptian radar for 200 years, with no records of any of them in slavery.
- At the same time, an adopted son to the pharaoh (Thutmosis, meaning born of the god Thoth), appears to have been disgraced and banished (the records for this bit are thin on the ground, but the son definitely existed and disappeared in disgrace, and was definitely adopted).
It is not a long-shot to wonder if, no longer believing in the god Thoth, this person would have cut his name to Mosis (the hebrew spelling of Moses anyway), and led an enslaved tribe to cause havoc all over the empire, at the same time as the volcano Thera erupted, causing many of the same plagues which are described in the OT (frogs and insects (such as locusts, gnats, and flies) always do remarkably well in volcanic eruptions, livestock die and people get boils due to the chemicals in the air, ash causes darkness across the land, etc.).
Pillar of smoke in the day, fire at night?
In addition, moving towards the volcano would have taken the Apiru to the Sea of Reeds specified in the OT, at a similar time to the arrival of the tidal wave which usually follows an eruption at sea, pulling the water first out to sea to create a causeway, and then crashing in.
It may sound like a bit of a long-shot, but we know a lot of it to be true. The volcanic eruption cannot be pinpointed except to within a couple of centuries, and the Egyptian dates are a little shaky too due to the way they recorded dates. However, we know that a major disaster struck, because just before Akhenaten instituted the first ever monotheism, he erected large numbers of statues to appease the Egyptian god of evil and destruction, Set. We know that the adopted son Thutmosis left at this time, and that the Apiru were causing havoc across the empire and then also dissappeared from the records. We know that there was a severe plague across egypt and in fact further afield. And the dates for the volcano fit.
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Interesting, Jack. It’s true that Akhenaten was monotheistic, but I don’t think that the Theban priesthood were at all pleased with the change. At his death, his son Tutankhaten was renamed Tutankhamun, the old religious orthodoxy restored, and most traces of Akhenaten obliterated.
As for dates, a quick search seems to point at 1350-1334 BC as the reign of Akhenaten. [1] [2].
The eruption of Thera, from a quick search, is variously placed at 1450-1500 BC [3] and 1628-1627 BC according to dendrochronological dating [4].
Of course, these dates are always disputed.
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In fact the term is too mild, “pollution” or even “prostitution” are the terms normally fund in the Old Testament (Servetus)
Am I right in thinking that “prostitution” had a rather wider meaning than it has now?
It sounds “Christian”, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t, it is purely 100% heathen.
I read the link you gave, and it places that quote in the Syringes, or the tombs of the pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings in Thebes. If so, it would likely be far older than late Hermetism.
But it’s precisely this sort of quote, and the others in the link, that inclines me to think that there were a whole set of ideas that were current at the time, and diffused out from Egypt. Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, (and also Constantine much later) all visited Egypt. There’s no reason that Hebrews weren’t visiting as well.
It seems much more likely to me that their were ideas floating around the ancient world just like there are ideas floating around now, and no particular nation or people come up with their own unique ideas, but use those in current circulation.
At a similar time, the volcano Thera is thought to have erupted (Jack T)
I’ve not heard that association before. Akhenaten seems to be usually dated to 1350-1334 BC. Thera’s eruption seems to be dated 1628-1627 BC according to tree rings, during the second Intermediate Period, 1782 – 1570 BC, a chaotic period in Egyptian history. The date also falls in the Hyksos period of 1663 – 1555 BC, possibly in the reign of Apepe (Apophis).
Thoth, incidentally, was identified with Hermes, from which Hermetic derives, I believe.
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Jack,
let me try and summarize the “gist” of your long post, if I’m getting it right. You are really saying, in reply to my post of June 2, 2006 06:37 PM:
If the above is a fair synthesis, then you better be aware that what you propose is nothing but the fantastic hypothesis which the Biblical scholar Ernst Sellin invented. In fact, Sellin threw into the story, as a bargain, the spurious adoption of the “volcanic God YHWH”, during the meandering in the Sinai desert, and the final murder of Moses by the rebellious “Habirus”.
Siegmund Freud later reinterpreted Sellin’s story in a psychoanalytic key (modifying significantly the very murder of Moses), and adding further details (see S. Freud, Moses and Monotheism). Freud was perfectly aware that his was not serious history, only a historical novel. An excuse for reinterpreting the Exodus, the story at the core of Jewish religion and self-identity, in his favourite, all-encompassing, psychoanalytic way.
Serious scholars today rank Sellin’s and Freud’s fantastic exercise on a par with Plato’s myth of Atlantis (which, incidentally, also includes disastrous volcanic eruptions).
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idlex:
There’s no reason that Hebrews weren’t visiting [Egypt] as well.
No, there is no reason. Jack Target (whether or not he is aware of the source, Sellin+Freud), goes as far as claiming that in fact Hebrews came from Egypt, or at least formed in Egypt as a people, with a monotheistic creed. But the undisputable fact is that, today as yesterday, the Hebrew religion is in sharp contrast and opposition to any other religion. I discount the Cabbalah, which is a spurious mix of Judaism and new-Platonism (heathen, once again), and Islam, which drew from Judaism its core tenets and, significantly, although it extols Jesus and Mary (going as far as declaring the Virgin Birth of Jesus, “the Word born from Mary”) violently rejects Trinity and Incarnation.
It seems much more likely to me that there were ideas floating around the ancient world…
The notion of “ideas floating around” is rather irrational (especially for a stern advocate of science!). It must be proved that specific ideas (and the Hermetic Trinity is, at the same time, an evolution of ancient Egyptian “trinities”, but in a very specific way – there is no female figure involved, for instance) have “moved” via actual historical “distribution channels”. At least that is how serious scholars deal with “history of ideas”.
Thoth, incidentally, was identified with Hermes, from which Hermetic derives, I believe.
Hermes, the Greek God with winged helmet and wings at his ankles, was the “messenger god”, further identified with Mercury, in the Roman Pantheon.
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The notion of “ideas floating around” is rather irrational (especially for a stern advocate of science!). It must be proved that specific ideas (and the Hermetic Trinity is, at the same time, an evolution of ancient Egyptian “trinities”, but in a very specific way – there is no female figure involved, for instance) have “moved” via actual historical “distribution channels”. At least that is how serious scholars deal with “history of ideas”. (Servetus)
I have to agree that it’s a bit loose to speak of ideas ‘floating around’. All I meant was that ideas get transmitted (not always accurately) from one person to another, via conversation, education, pamphlets, books. etc.
And ideas evolve as they pass from person to person. In the history of science, since you mention it, Copernicus introduced heliocentrism, but with the planets revolving round the sun in circles, and the fixed stars as lights attached to an enormous sphere bounding the universe. Kepler adopted the system, and found elliptical orbits fitted best the observed motions. Newton adopted both Copernicus and Kepler (as well as Galileo’s idea of inertia as uniform motion in a straight line, which became Newton’s first law of motion), and came up with the laws of motion and gravity. There isn’t any specific idea here, but one that keeps changing as successive thinkers adapt and adjust it.
If so, Egyptian trinitarian notions, plus Egyptian incarnation ideas (Pharaohs were routinely described as ‘Son of Re’), and Egyptian ideas of an afterlife and a soul (Ka, or Ba), all seem to provide a set of ideas which Greeks, Hebrews, and subsequently Christians could develop further. And one must bear in mind, after all, that Egyptian civilisation and religion remained more or less intact until circa 500 AD.
You may dismiss it as ‘heathen’, but that’s like dismissing something because it’s ‘French’. It is of no consequence where an idea comes from, or who has it. It’s only the idea that matters.
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Apologies Servetus, but your summary isn’t at all what I was meaning! My rather lengthy post was completely unrelated to anything we’d said before, except that we had been talking about Egypt in the context of Christianity!
Incidentally I don’t claim myself any of the things I posted, or guarantee their truth. This is some stuff I’ve been getting from a rather interesting book I read a couple of months back, but I’m no egyptologist and can’t speak with any authority!
I’ve not heard that association before. Akhenaten seems to be usually dated to 1350-1334 BC. Thera’s eruption seems to be dated 1628-1627 BC according to tree rings, during the second Intermediate Period, 1782 – 1570 BC, a chaotic period in Egyptian history. The date also falls in the Hyksos period of 1663 – 1555 BC, possibly in the reign of Apepe (Apophis).
Now this is unfortunate, I’d better have a look at that book, because I remember him saying something about this – unfortunately the book is with a friend at the moment! If I remember the gist I think it was essentially that the error margins in dating would allow them to happen together, even though their central, assumed dates are quite different. I know that there is some dispute over Thera, since the geological dating is different to the archaeological dating by over a century. However even with the most liberal dating it is hard to bring it to within many decades of akhenaten’s time, so I think I’ll have to get hold of that book! Watch this space….
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You’re right about Thera’s dating. The archaeological dating puts it at more like 1500 BC, and it would mess up all the archaeological dates to change it to the tree ring / ice core dates.
There are people who say that the Egyptian chronology is wrong too.
But I’ve read that there are no known reports from Egypt of the eruption of Thera. However if it happened during the Hyksos intermediate period, when Egypt was occupied, there may well not have been a system of reporting active.
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DVC is a load of “drivel” ( as my english teacher used to write on my school essays). If it hadn’t trodden firmly on the corns of christianity and the roman catholic church in particular we would never have heard of it.
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If it hadn’t trodden firmly on the corns of christianity and the roman catholic church in particular we would never have heard of it. [Negatron]
Talking about “corns”, what about “crop circles”? What about the “saucer frienzy” in the 40-50′s? Anything would do, as Carl Jung argued. People crave the supernatural or at least to find out that we are not alone in the Universe, on Earth, this “small flower bed that makes us all so wild” (l’aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci), as Dante put it in his Divine Comedy
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There isn’t any specific idea here [with the cosmology of Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton], but one that keeps changing as successive thinkers adapt and adjust it. [idlex]
I dare say there is (a specific idea), so much so that we still speak of “Copernican revolution”. That it was not original, that Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 BCE) had already proposed at the time of Hellenistic civilization, does not change the fact that it was revolutionary, even in his days: and Aristarchus was in fact ostracized, and his heliocentric model of the solar system soon forgotten, or rather ignored. For an excellent depiction of all this see Arthur Koestler: The Sleepwalkers. A History of Man’s Changing Vision of the Universe .
You may dismiss it as ‘heathen’, but that’s like dismissing something because it’s ‘French’. It is of no consequence where an idea comes from, or who has it. It’s only the idea that matters. [idlex]
I am not ‘dismissing’ the Trinity because it is ‘heathen’: if you read carefully I am claiming that it is (heathen), and therefore, that it has got nothing to do with the Bible and with the strict monotheist notion of God (YHWH) that is found there. Of course one can make the desperate attempt to claim that YHWH is a “local Palestinian disguise” for the Egyptian God Aten, but I claim all this is nothing but hocus-pocus, and worse. An indirect evidence is that one of the most vocal supporters of this “theory” was Savitri Devi (see her book Son of the Sun: The Life and Philosophy of Akhnaton, King of Egypt- and Wikipedia’s entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savitri_Devi_Mukherji ), a woman of mixed ethnicity (French, English, Italian and Greek blood) and enthusiast of a concoction of esoteric Hindu and Nazi doctrines.
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Apologies Servetus, but your summary isn’t at all what I was meaning!
Incidentally I don’t claim myself any of the things I posted, or guarantee their truth.
Jack,
must confess that mine was a deliberate, calculated provocation, to see if you would endorse the “stuff” the you were reporting. I am kind of relieved to find out that you do not share the rather fantastic things you were “throwing into the pot”.
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For an excellent depiction of all this see Arthur Koestler: The Sleepwalkers. (Servetus)
It is indeed an excellent book. And the Copernican revolution is just a term for a process of discovery which, in many ways, still continues.
And are you claiming that if some notion is in the Bible, then that lends it a credence not to be found elsewhere? And that you reject (if you do indeed reject) the Trinity because it’s not in the Bible?
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idlex:
And the Copernican revolution is just a term for a process of discovery which, in many ways, still continues.
This is wrong, but I won’t dispute it, unless you insist.
And are you claiming that if some notion is in the Bible, then that lends it a credence [sic] not to be found elsewhere? And that you reject (if you do indeed reject) the Trinity because it’s not in the Bible?
I have already (not only claimed but) argued that the biblical God YHWH, to be found in the Bible, is incompatible with any form (“christian” or Egyptian or other) of Trinity. I claim that Strict Monotheism (non-trinitarian) is the only authentic form of Christianity (although probably recognized by less than 1% Christians). It is not a problem of credibility, but of compatibility
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Isaac Newton, for one, would have agreed with you about trinitarianism.
And what’s your problem with ‘credence’? One of its meanings is ‘something supporting a claim to belief, recommendation’. I see no problem.
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Blimey!
this thread is now way over my head. Maybe my English teacher was right after all.
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cre•dence n.
1. Acceptance as true or valid; belief. See Synonyms at belief.
2. Claim to acceptance; trustworthiness.
3. Recommendation; credentials: a letter of credence.
4. A small table or shelf for holding the bread, wine, and vessels of the Eucharist when they are not in use at the altar.
cred•i•bil•i•ty n.
1. The quality, capability, or power to elicit belief: “America’s credibility must not be squandered, especially by its leaders” Henry A. Kissinger.
2. A capacity for belief: a story that strained our credibility.
I suppose “trustworthiness” is even more appropriate, in this circumstance, than “power to elicit belief”. So I recognize I was being just unduly fussy.
Newton was certainly (albeit secretly) anti-trinitarian. Whether he was Strict Monotheist (viz. he believed that Jesus is Son of God only in the domain of time, that is only since he was born from Mary) or rather Arian (viz. he believed the Son was not fully God, yet the first, fully spiritual, creature of God, by means of whom all the rest of creation had been carried out; and only secondarily “son” in the sense of “born of a woman”), is still a subject for debate.
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