TOLSTOY AND KING LEAR; ELEPHANT IN THE GARDEN (OF EDEN); OBESITY AND INTESTINAL BACTERIA

Rodin: Orpheus and Eurydice
 
WHEN ORPHEUS SANG IN HADES

all suffering ceased. The flaming wheel
stood still; Tantalus unbent
from hunger and thirst;
and Sisyphus sat down on his boulder.

During my own years of hell,
home after a day
of running the mimeo machine,
choking on the sour stench,

I turned on my stereo, and the slow
movement of the Italian Symphony
took me in its arms.
Adagios of rivers and meadows

swayed in the room’s dusk
like a calm faraway light —
and suddenly I couldn’t see,
the world glimmering through tears:

their salty sting on my face,
the moon of my breath
on the cold glass of night.
In that moment I knew

I had the best, the first-rate:
the song of Orpheus that made
any boulder a pebble
in the river of stars.

~ Oriana © 2016

Orpheus before Hades and Persephone, 1685
 
TOLSTOY AND KING LEAR
 
“Forty years later, George Orwell responded to Tolstoy’s 1906 attack [on Shakespeare as inartistic and evil] in an essay titled “Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool” (1947). His answer? Tolstoy’s objections “to the raggedness of Shakespeare’s plays, the irrelevancies, the incredible plots, the exaggerated language,” are at bottom an objection to Shakespeare’s earthy humanism, his “exuberance,” or—to use another psychoanalytic term—his juissance. “Tolstoy,” writes Orwell, “is not simply trying to rob others of a pleasure he does not share. He is doing that, but his quarrel with Shakespeare goes further. It is the quarrel between the religious and the humanist attitudes towards life.”

But why, Orwell asks, does Tolstoy pick on Lear, specifically? Because of the character’s strong resemblance to Tolstoy himself. “Lear renounces his throne,” he writes, “but expects everyone to continue treating him as a king.”

~ But is it not also curiously similar to the history of Tolstoy himself? There is a general resemblance which one can hardly avoid seeing, because the most impressive event in Tolstoy’s life, as in Lear’s, was a huge and gratuitous act of renunciation. In his old age, he renounced his estate, his title and his copyrights, and made an attempt — a sincere attempt, though it was not successful — to escape from his privileged position and live the life of a peasant.

But the deeper resemblance lies in the fact that Tolstoy, like Lear, acted on mistaken motives and failed to get the results he had hoped for. According to Tolstoy, the aim of every human being is happiness, and happiness can only be attained by doing the will of God. But doing the will of God means casting off all earthly pleasures and ambitions, and living only for others. Ultimately, therefore, Tolstoy renounced the world under the expectation that this would make him happier. But if there is one thing certain about his later years, it is that he was NOT happy. ~

Orwell draws an even larger point from the philosophical differences Tolstoy has with Shakespeare: “Ultimately it is the Christian attitude which is self-interested and hedonistic,” he writes, “since the aim is always to get away from the painful struggle of earthly life and find eternal peace in some kind of Heaven or Nirvana…. Often there is a seeming truce between the humanist and the religious believer, but in fact their attitudes cannot be reconciled: one must choose between this world and the next.” 

On this last point, no doubt, Tolstoy and Orwell would agree. In Orwell’s analysis, Tolstoy’s polemic against Shakespeare’s humanism further “sharpens the contradictions,” we might say, between the two attitudes, and between his own former humanism and the fervent, if unhappy, religiosity of his later years.”

http://www.openculture.com/2016/03/tolstoy-calls-shakespeare-an-insignificant-inartistic-writer.html
Derek Jacobi as King Lear

Oriana:

The irony was that in the end Tolstoy decided there was no personal god after all. Having rejected the Russian Orthodox church, he tried to construct a personal spirituality. He went through the trouble of combining the four gospels into one in an attempt to arrive at a coherent story of Christ, but even his own version failed him in the end. He thought that faith, no matter how irrational, is needed to make suffering and mortality endurable, but was careful not to connect this “faith” to any specific religion.

He still tried to defend a system of utopian social justice, however. Basically he was profoundly miserable. He became depressed in mid-life, after completing Anna Karenina, and never quite shook off his depression (which no doubt had a lot to do with his ever-worsening marriage). His religious and philosophic quest brought no healing (and no wonder — introspective overthinking was the last thing he needed). In particular, he rejected the epicurean position of enjoying life without asking about ultimate meaning — and Shakespeare stood for life in its richness without much interest in metaphysics.

Orwell is right: Tolstoy managed to retain the life-rejecting religious mentality even if he couldn’t quite swallow the Trinity, creation in six days, the devils and the angels and similar nonsense.

And Tolstoy’s bizarre dismissal of Shakespeare as “inartistic”? The answer is surprisingly easy. To fully appreciate Shakespeare’s genius, you have to read him in the original. Then the poetry is simply overwhelming. But I remember, in high school, first watching Romeo and Juliet in a mediocre Polish translation and thinking, “What’s so great about this play? The plot is terrible. The two lovers have nothing profound to say. Why is this work regarded as a masterpiece?”

At the same time, even in my teens I realized that there had to be a reason why Shakespeare was universally celebrated as a genius. I was eager to master English well enough so I could read Shakespeare. Happily, I did reach my goal. And I was not disappointed. The great lines were there, and great scenes — think, for instance, how good Shakespeare is at mad scenes. Or the graveyard scene in Hamlet — it’s hard to think of anything that compares — unless another famous scene out of Shakespeare.

Shakespeare’s ability to create powerful, unforgettable characters is also one of the traits of his genius. Not that we have to choose . . . and of course there is no denying the greatness of the best of Tolstoy, but if pressed to the wall and told I could have only one, I’d pick Lady Macbeth over Anna Karenina, Rosalind or Portia over Natasha, or Hamlet or indeed even Lear, poor flawed deluded Lear, or almost any interesting Shakespearean character — even Caliban! — over any of Tolstoy's characters. Not that Tolstoy’s characters are not memorable, but — when it comes to Shakespeare, there is a quantum leap. Lear is timeless. Count Vronsky? Hmmm . . .

Overall, Orwell’s point is right on: the world of Shakespeare’s plays is basically secular, with an occasional religious figure like a friar being completely minor. Shakespeare is not concerned with metaphysics, compared to his interest in the politics of kingship, for instance, and the consequences of evil actions right here on earth. Like Dostoyevski, Shakespeare is a great psychologist. What happens psychologically to Dostoyevski's Raskolnikov is fascinating to watch — just as the unraveling of Macbeth's mind is.

Tolstoy’s great mistake was to seek a one-size-fits-all universal “meaning of life.” Shakespeare might reply that there are no answers; there are only stories. And there is language in which to tell these stories — and language has its own collective wisdom. Add to this the kind of ability to use language that a writer of genius has — and that is quite enough. Life is enough, and humanity is enough. Add to this the beauty of nature, and it would be ungracious to complain. 

Tolstoy with his daughter Tatyana, 1902

*
THE FIRST TIME I STOOD UP TO A PRIEST was just after I turned 14, a month or so after I'd left the church. The beauty of it unfolded when I suddenly realized I didn't have to stand there and listen to him practically yell at me in the street. It was a major, crowded street (Grójecka, in the Ochota district of Warsaw). The priest was having a combined rage and anxiety attack. He was red in the face and shaking. “Have you stopped going to church?” he asked sharply. Then, with unmistakable fear in his voice, “Have you stopped believing in god?”

His fear startled me. I didn’t answer. My silence was the answer. And this seemingly tiny fact — that a young girl had decided god didn’t exist — seemed to unnerve him to the core, to threaten his whole worldview. It was the first time in my life that I felt I was threatening to someone — a middle-aged man at that! Yet I was only a teenager, a “girl from a good home” who’d never be impolite to an adult. No need to fear that I’d say, “Fuck Jesus” or "Fuck god" or “give the priest a fig” with the fingers of my right hand. No.

I merely stood in the middle of the sidewalk, small next to this massive man, a sparrow against a crow — “little sparrows,” as our literature teacher called me now and then — a mere girl but suddenly with a mind that had obviously done something other than regurgitate catechism. He, red in the face and screaming; me, cool and silent, just staring at him.

After five minutes or so of listening to his frantic scolding, I turned around without a word and walked away. First the realization that god had no power to punish me, then the realization that my parish priest had no power to punish me. He continued to speak in a loud voice, getting even redder in his face, gasping. Without a word, I turned my back on him and resumed walking to wherever I was going.

But at that point it was no longer real courage. I wish I'd had courage back when hell was terribly real for me, and oh, how I hated going to confession! I might have stayed longer in a liberal Protestant church . . . or perhaps not as long because who knows at what point reading the bible would make me question the more revolting stories . . .

It was fascinating, though, to see a priest throw a tantrum in public, pedestrians in a quick staccato walking by us with with barely a glance at the spectacle — the usual human wave of faces lost in their own preoccupations. I threatened his worldview, while he did not threaten my new clarity. He, a suddenly scared priest of a dead god; I, suddenly filled with courage, my life ahead of me, the future, the new world.

My parish church in Warsaw. The brick used to be much darker. This photo was taken after a clean-up. I'm glad: it must have been the gloomiest church in the city.
 
THE ELEPHANT IN THE GARDEN (OF EDEN)

“Many Biblical stories have their "elephant in the room": An obvious, slap-in-the-face question that is so basic and so deeply troubling that until you find a way to deal with it, you really can't claim to have any understanding at all f the story you are reading. Is there a question of this sort -- a question of this magnitude -- that we need to deal with when reading the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden?

I think there is.

Let's talk a little bit about this mysterious tree in the Garden, the one that God places off-limits. It has a name. It is known as "the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil". By any measure, that's a pretty strange name for a tree -- but if that's what the Bible calls it, then that's presumably what it is: It somehow conveys a "knowledge of Good and Evil," an ability to distinguish right from wrong to those who partake of its fruits.

But there's a big problem with this. In a sentence, it is this:

"Why would God want to deny this knowledge to people?"

Think about it. Are human beings better or worse off, for their knowledge of "good and evil"? Is knowing right from wrong an asset or a liability for humanity?

Imagine a world in which people were pretty much the same as they are now — they were smart, they could walk, they could talk, they could drive cars and become investment bankers. They were missing only one thing. They didn't know right from wrong.

We have a word for people like that. We call them sociopaths.

A tempting way out of the problem would be to suggest that somehow, it was all a set-up: God really did want people to have the knowledge the tree would give them, and was in fact "glad" when they ate from it. But this approach is deeply problematic. For the way the Torah tells the story, the Almighty seems pretty disappointed with Adam and Eve after they ate from the tree; he in fact punishes them severely. How are we to understand this disappointment? It seems a little perverse to imagine the Almighty secretly chuckling with pleasure that Adam and Eve finally ate the fruit he put off limits — but hiding His joy behind a mask of displeasure and anger.

Clearly, God really did want Adam and Eve to avoid the Tree of Knowledge. But that brings us back to our question: Why would the Lord want to deny humanity an understanding of good and evil?

Catch-22 in the garden

The truth is, the question is really even a little deeper than this. It's not simply that it seems strange for God to have put a "tree of knowledge" off-limits to Adam and Eve. Rather, the very existence of such a tree seems to create a basic contradiction in the story as a whole. Here's why:

What happens immediately after Adam and Eve eat from the tree whose mysterious fruits confer knowledge of "good and evil"? The Almighty becomes angry with them and punishes them. But if Adam and Eve were punished for what they did, this presupposes that they knew they did something wrong. You don't punish people who are unaware that they did something bad. So Adam and Eve evidently had some knowledge of good and evil before eating from the tree. At the very least, they knew it was right to obey God when He told them not to eat, and it was wrong to disobey Him.

But now we're really stuck. For if Adam and Eve already understood good and evil before reaching for the fruit, well then, they already possessed what the tree was supposed to give them. And that would mean that the tree was useless, nothing but an empty farce.

http://www.aish.com/jl/b/eb/ge/48965251.html

My source didn't identify the painter, but the style points to the school of Claude Lorraine, especially for the landscape. 

Oriana:

“Did the person know right from wrong?” remains the foremost legal question. The insane and the mentally handicapped are not held responsible for their action because we assume they don't know right from wrong. And Adam and Eve presumably did not know right from wrong until they ate the fruit. But maybe they knew it was wrong to disobey? This is the Catch-22 in the story. Even a metaphorical reading is not exactly easy.

I suspect Cardinal Ratzinger, the Grand Inquisitor under Pope JP2 and later Pope Benedict, will come to be acknowledged as a revolutionary figure in the history of the church. It was a public secret that Ratzinger and JP2 both believed in evolution. Ratzinger was the author of the doctrine that heaven and hell were not actual places. He’s also on record as having said that Genesis was a mishmash of “pagan fables.” Without the charisma of either JP2 or Pope Francis, for now he gets no respect, but in the future, I predict, that will change.

 
This is Poussin's Adam and Eve (1639), with someone in the clouds appearing to wave hello. But Eve isn't waving back. She's looking at Adam, pointing her finger upward in an abstract way.

Maybe she’s only saying, “I think it's going to rain.” But given the nature of such paintings, we know that’s not the case. They are meant to be pictorial sermons. At first I enjoyed the gender reversal: it's Eve doing the preaching. Then a friend said the obvious: Eve is pointing out the Forbidden Tree to Adam, encouraging him. Yes, of course. I was so distracted by the pale figure in the sky I didn’t even notice the fruit-laden trees.

BUT AREN’T ATHEISTS TERRIFIED OF DYING?

There isn’t a human being who has never been terrified of dying. It’s only normal, especially in a dangerous situation, e.g. being in midst of tornado, or being shot at. But I know that the question isn’t about the times of danger when we are on automatic; even the most deranged schizophrenics have been observed to evacuate a building on fire with great efficiency. Never mind philosophy: we seem to have a huge interest in existing.

But this is not about running out of a burning building. It’s more about waking up in the wee hours, safe in our comfortable bed yet suddenly seized with mortal dread.

I'm not sure if those moments are universal, but I have no trouble admitting that they have happened to me, and the intensity of the terror is unforgettable. But the interesting part is that I can’t remember the last time I experienced such a moment. What I do remember is that those moments used to happen with some regularity when I was young.

Ah, wistful words: “when I was young.” The unavoidable past tense. There were some very good things about being young, but . . .  there were some bad things too. And the worst period of youth was before I found my vocation.

In my twenties and even into my early thirties, I felt lost. I had no idea how to use my intelligence and intellectual skills, and what scattered but considerable knowledge I had. A wise counselor said, “You don’t fit into any category. You will have to create your own career.” But how? I did show an early interest in writing, but it was derailed by the verdict of “no talent” from an instructor (some people could be called “anti-mentors”). I’d throw myself into this or that field, only to see my interest die within a year or two. My jobs didn’t really engage my mind. My life was “not working.” And . . . I was experiencing occasional panic attacks about dying. It didn’t matter if I was miserable — the thought of not ceasing to exist was unbearable.

To summarize a long and complicated journey, in my mid-thirties I did gain a sense of vocation and my life’s work. I was busy with that work, and have been ever since — except for a period of mid-life depression, when I lost the sense of my vocation. I eventually regained it, in a changed form. Being cornered by mortality was a big part of that story, which I told many times. The gist of it is, again: work, vocation.

When I came upon Rilke’s “To work is to live without dying,” it made perfect sense to me. My experience exactly.

St. Augustine said something like (I quote from memory): “The key to immortality is to lead a life worth remembering.” I translate that as not literal immortality, but simply as not thinking about dying except once in a while — with some sadness, but without terror. The feeling of gratitude has long ago become dominant. I am grateful for having been able to make my modest contribution. I continue to share beauty and what I hope is some wisdom — or at least depth and honesty in my writing.

And yes, there is Epicurus, and that could be the answer right there. But personally speaking, my answer isn’t based on philosophy or logic. I’m simply too busy living.

What if I lost my ability to contribute? I'm beginning to suspect that simply enjoying life at a receptive level might be enough. It wouldn’t have been enough in my younger years, when I intensely needed to be productive. I realize that it’s not just my work experiences that I’ve come to regard as a “life worth remembering,” but all kinds of rich and beautiful experiences — and some painful but important experiences — even if they did not result in essays or poems. I’ve certainly been “mellowing.”

I don’t believe we “go anywhere” once the brain ceases to function. The consciousness ceases to happen (consciousness is a process, not a thing) the way a flame ceases when whatever sustained it is exhausted. Meanwhile, let’s enjoy the lovely light. 

But what about the dying itself? Won’t that be terrifying?

Probably not. Experienced nurses tell us that practically everyone dies peacefully. Brain function diminishes; a special neurochemistry of natural dying comes into play, and it’s gentle: nature's last mercy. Dennis Nurske wrote a lovely short poem about it:

Psalm to Be Read with Closed Eyes
 
Ignorance will carry me through the last days,
the blistering cities, over briny rivers
swarming with jellyfish, as once my father
carried me from the car up the tacked carpet
to the white bed, and if I woke, I never knew it.


 
OBESITY GUT BACTERIA VERSUS SLENDERNESS BACTERIA
 
(For many years now I've been reading stories to the effect that fat people have different gut bacteria than lean people, but this one is the most specific yet).

“The logic behind weight-loss surgery seems simple: rearrange the digestive tract so the stomach can hold less food and the food bypasses part of the small intestine, allowing fewer of a meal's calories to be absorbed. Bye-bye, obesity.

A study of lab mice, published on Wednesday, begs to differ. It concludes that one of the most common and effective forms of bariatric surgery, called Roux-en-Y gastric bypass, melts away pounds not — or not only — by re-routing the digestive tract, as long thought, but by changing the bacteria in the gut.

Or, in non-scientific terms, the surgery somehow replaces fattening microbes with slimming ones.

If that occurs in people, too, then the same bacteria-changing legerdemain achieved by gastric bypass might be accomplished without putting obese patients under the knife in an expensive and risky operation.

"These elegant experiments show that you can mimic the action of surgery with something less invasive," said Dr. Francesco Rubino of Catholic University in Rome and a pioneer in gastric-bypass surgery. "For instance, you might transfer bacteria or even manipulate the diet" to encourage slimming bacteria and squelch fattening kinds, said Rubino, who was not involved in the study.

Fattening bugs, slimming bugs
 
For many obese patients, particularly those with type 2 diabetes, gastric bypass has succeeded where nothing else has. Severely obese patients routinely lose 65 to 75 percent of their excess weight and fat after the operation, studies show, and leave their diabetes behind.

Oddly, however, the diabetes remission often occurs before significant weight loss. That has made bypass surgeons and weight-loss experts suspect that Roux-en-Y changes not only anatomy but also metabolism or the endocrine system. In other words, the surgery does something besides re-plumb the gut.

That "something," according to previous studies, includes altering the mix of trillions of microbes in the digestive tract. Not only are the "gut microbiota" different in lean people and obese people, but the mix of microbes changes after an obese patient undergoes gastric bypass and becomes more like the microbiota in lean people.

Researchers did not know, however, whether the microbial change was the cause or the effect of post-bypass weight loss.

That is what the new study, by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University, set out to answer.

They first performed Roux-en-Y on obese mice. As expected, the animals quickly slimmed down, losing 29 percent of their weight and keeping it off, the researchers report in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

To make sure there was not something about the general experience of surgery, rather than gastric bypass specifically, that affected the animals, the scientists performed "sham" Roux-en-Y on other obese mice. In this procedure, the researchers made incisions as if they were going to do a gastric bypass, but instead connected everything up as nature had it.

The researchers then transferred gut microbiota from the Roux-en-Y mice to microbe-free obese mice. Result: the recipient mice lost weight and fat - no surgery required. Crucially, obese mice that received gut bugs from mice that had received sham Roux-en-Y, not the real thing, did not slim down.

It is the first experimental evidence that changes in the gut microbiota cause the weight loss after gastric bypass, and that the new, post-bypass mix of microbes can cause weight loss in animals that did not have surgery.

In particular, just a week after surgery the Roux-en-Y mice harbored relatively more of the same types of bacteria that become more abundant in people after gastric bypass and that lean people have naturally.

"The effects of gastric bypass are not just anatomical, as we thought," said Dr. Lee Kaplan, senior author of the study and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "They're also physiological. Now we need to learn more about how the microbiota exert their effects."

Slimming bacteria work their magic in either of two ways, studies of gut microbiota show. They seem to raise metabolism, allowing people to burn off a 630-calorie chocolate chip muffin more easily.

They also extract fewer calories from the muffin in the first place. In contrast, fattening bacteria wrest every last calorie from food.

Transferring slimming bacteria into obese people might be one way to give them the benefits of weight-loss surgery without an operation. It might also be possible to devise a menu that encourages the proliferation of slimming bacteria and reduces the population of fattening bacteria.

Another new study found that figuring out whether you have slimming microbiota or fattening ones might be as easy as breathing.

In a study published in the online edition of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles report that people whose breath has high concentrations of both hydrogen and methane gases are more likely to have a higher body mass index and higher percentage of body fat.

Methane is associated with bacteria called Methanobrevibacter smithii, which in overabundance may cause weight gain by extracting calories from food super-efficiently, Cedars' Ruchi Mathur, who led the study, said: "It could allow a person to harvest more calories from their food."

The breath test could provide a warning that someone is at risk of obesity because he harbors fattening microbiota.

It could also validate what many overweight people have long suspected: if their slim friends eat two slices of bacon-cheeseburger pizza the 600 calories go through them like celery, but if the overweight person indulges then every calorie seems to turn into more fat. People absorb different quantities of calories from the exact same food, thanks to their gut microbiota.”

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/03/28/after-weight-loss-surgery-new-gut-bacteria-keep-obesity-away.html

Sea lions in La Jolla Cove. Photo: Gwyn Henry

ending on beauty

I looked into the waters
seeing not only
my reflected face
but the great sky
that framed my lonely figure . . .
and I allowed myself
to be
astonished
by the great everywhere
calling to me
like an old,
invisible and unspoken
invitation

~ David Whyte, from “Twice Blessed”

photo: David Whyte

WHY ISIS IS LOSING; DOSTOYEVSKI: CHRIST VERSUS TRUTH; NOT DELAYING AND NOT STRUGGLING; ZBIGNIEW HERBERT: HOMETOWN

A reindeer with Nazi bombers over Russia, 1941 — humanity at its worst versus the purity of nature

MY HOMETOWN

On the bottom the ocean
lays a salt star
air distills shiny pebbles
and flawed memory
draws the city map

the starfish of streets
the planets of squares
green galaxies
of parks and gardens

emigrés in ruined hats
complain of diminished substance
their coffers full of holes
weep precious stones
even though they are still in their prime

in a dream I’m walking to school
after all
I know the way

on the left Pandasza’s shop
gymnasium number three
the bookstores
through the window I can even see
the head of old Bodek

I want to turn toward the cathedral
suddenly the view breaks off
the rest is gone
I can’t walk any farther
though I know that this street
is not a dead end

the ocean of fickle memory
crumbles images
in the end only the stone
upon which I was born

every night I stand
barefoot before the slammed
shut gate of my hometown

~ Zbigniew Herbert, tr. Oriana Ivy

A cemetery angel in Lvov, Herbert’s hometown (Lviv in Ukrainian)
 
I happen to be fascinated by this poem by Zbigniew Herbert — it reminds me of my similar dreams about Warsaw, the city suddenly breaking off. I don’t mean gently blurring, tapering off into fog, but simply breaking off, a blank abyss a block away — the city devoured by nothingness, flawed memory providing only so much but no more.

ISIS IS LOSING BECAUSE THE REAL PROBLEM IS OCCUPATION; RELIGIOUS VIOLENCE AND “ECSTATIC ASCETICISM”
 
“I’ve argued in the past that mixing religion and violence is not new. Every religion has done it and will continue to do it. This begs the question—for what reason?

Well, humans, when organizing and maintaining power gather in groups to control territory. A philosophy that motivates humans to defend and take territory is highly valuable, and religion, which calls people to an ultimate commitment, is incredibly efficient and effective.

Scott Appleby, a University of Notre Dame theorist on war and peace, calls this “ecstatic asceticism.” It is a powerful pitch to push humans to give everything for a cause. We see this in many of the great speeches in wartime: Pope Urban II’s speech for the first crusade resounds with this desire to give one’s life for the ultimate reward. It’s both exhilarating and terrifying. And it is a motivation that every successful religious leader has used to get their armies to do their business.

We see this in the ISIS army today. Abu Bakr al-Berghadi, the leader of ISIS, uses religion to motivate his army to do his bidding. Suicide bombings are a particular type of this kind of action. We saw this in the 911 attacks, the instructions given to the suicide attackers were filled with religious rhetoric devoted to indoctrinating the suicide bombers so that every action was sanctified and supported by the Quran and by religious law. They are terrifying, you can find the text in the appendix in Bruce Lincoln’s Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion After September 11.

ISIS, like al-Qaeda, is defending against “the Crusaders” who either threaten their territory or occupy their territory. Pape, who is a political conservative by the way, has said many times that the Iraq War and the US occupation was one of the single greatest “disasters” in the history of US foreign policy. It was “exactly” what Osama bin Laden wanted, and it became the core rationale for recruiting the more than 2,000 suicide bombings that followed in the Middle East and elsewhere. For Pape, occupying the territory of a group motivates individuals to do violence and more particularly forms of suicide terrorism.

As Pape has estimated, ISIS has recently lost nearly twenty percent of its territory. Their ability to motivate and produce their suicide attacks has plummeted. The Western allied bombings on local militias are making progress. And the fighters on the ground opposing ISIS are Shia and now some Sunni. Westerners are not the ground warriors, so it is much harder for ISIS to argue and recruit fighters to do suicide terrorism against fellow Islamic soldiers. ISIS’s leadership is panicking and its new strategy is to target the allies of the US led coalition. ISIS’s attacks on Paris, Belgium, Russia and Turkey are its way to tempt these countries into sending in ground soldiers.

ISIS is desperate and Obama and his allies will not bite; their bombing strategy, and their partnership with Islamic groups to fight ISIS are working.
So, is religion the problem? Yes and no. Religion, as I’ve argued, is highly motivating, especially by a young aggressive male leader who knows how to use the ultimate rewards of religion (whether blessings by a god or a trip to heaven) as a reward for giving one’s life. Religion is of strategic value to leaders who are trying to protect or take territory—think Crusaders, who by the way failed to keep their territory in the end. Indeed, the Crusades ended in disaster for everyone involved.

What is the real problem? Don’t occupy other peoples’ territory! We are slowly learning that outside attempts to control the fate and fortunes of the Middle East have ended in one tragedy after another. We can bolster those who ask for help but otherwise, I would argue, we have no business intervening in that region of the world.

But again, for now, Obama’s strategy to avoid putting soldiers in the Middle East and partnering with Muslims to fight ISIS is smart and is working. We are winning. It just doesn’t feel that way.

Religion, fundamentally, is not THE problem, occupying the land of others is. How to adjudicate what land belongs to whom is the critical issue of this century and how that is worked out will make all the difference in the future of war and peace in our time.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jameswellman/2016/03/were-winning-against-isis-religious-violence-and-occupation/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=FBCP-PATH&utm_content=jameswellman

Oriana:

We must beware of candidates calling for "boots on the ground": that's precisely what ISIS wants to provoke. When Saddam warned that invading Iraq would mean "opening the gates of hell," he was right.  

*
ISIS DESTROYS ART TREASURES NOT JUST BECAUSE THOSE ARE “IDOLS”; ENLIGHTENMENT AS ANALOGOUS TO THE ISLAMIC GOLDEN AGE
 
~ "There is a long history of fundamentalist Islamic groups destroying cultural treasures. The Buddhas of Bamiyan. The “end of the world” gate in the ancient city of Timbuktu. Over 95 percent of ancient Mecca. Countless thousands of ancient manuscripts. Groups from ISIS to the Taliban to Wahabist Saudi clerics have made it clear: everything must be obliterated.

They claim, of course, that these things must be destroyed because they are idolatrous in themselves or might inspire idolatrous thinking in others. But I think it is far more likely that ISIS wants them destroyed because these objects prove the falseness of their version of history.

From the 8th to the 14th centuries, the flourishing, trading, creative, scientific, philosophic, artistic, and intellectual marvel that was the Islamic Golden Age produced a ringing argument against the ISIS narrative that their way – the way of extremism and the sword – is the only path to success.

Golden Age science, mathematics, and medicine were the envy of the world. The tolerance and intellectual curiosity modeled by thinkers like Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, and Ibn Rushd created a civilization where, more than anywhere else, Muslims, Jews, and Christians were able to study, trade, and live in unprecedented peace and productivity. And this Golden Age died when people who would have been very much at home in ISIS began to gain power.

It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve come to see the Enlightenment as potentially analogous to the Golden Age of Islam: it may not be here to stay. If we and future generations are not vigilant, we may yet lose it, over the next century or two, slowly yielding to silliness and superstition, to hogwash and horsefeathers, to censors and scolds.

For ISIS to continue to spread their evil, they must destroy the history that gives evidence against them – by destroying the museums and libraries that protect it – just as they must destroy the living humans who fight them.

Are the arts and humanities important? Do they accomplish anything we should care about?

Look at those who want to destroy them. Consider what their ends are. Then tell me." ~

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2015/03/01/what-isis-teaches-us-about-the-value-of-arts-and-humanities/#ixzz3T9grsQWc


Assyrian Flood Tablet, Epic of Gilgamesh

**

This is such an obvious riposte -- and yet, while the same has often been said in a more wordy way, the power of brevity makes this one fabulous.

Also, this is psychologically interesting. There must exist at least a few Christians who have thought, "But what if it's the Koran that's correct?" or "What if it's the Orthodox Jews who got it right?" I don't suppose there is any worry about the Bhgavad Gita, but surely the thought about either Islam or Orthodox Judaism being the only true doctrine is plausible and could be a source of anxiety — I mean, here you are, eating pork and shellfish — or, worse I suppose, if a woman, wearing make-up instead of a face veil!

DOSTOYEVSKI: CHRIST VERSUS THE TRUTH
 
 “[Dostoyevski] was never able to resolve the contradiction contained in his statement on the choice between Christ and truth,” Milosz writes in “The Land of Ulro.” Milosz is referring here to the startling sentence in one of D’s letters: “If I had to choose between Christ and the truth, I would let go of the truth.”

And D never provided an adequate counter-response to Ivan’s arguments. In fact D boasted that no one had presented the case for atheism as eloquently as he did through the mouth of Ivan Karamazov. True, there were supposed to be two additional volumes of the trilogy. Only the first volume was meant to belong to Ivan. The last one was meant to belong to the saintly Alyosha — though D was too great a writer to create one-dimensional characters, and I wouldn’t be the least surprised if Aloysha became a revolutionary and ended up in Siberia for some time — a writer can’t escape his central themes.

Ultimately that first volume is all we have, and the scene between the proto-Communist Grand Inquisitor and the silent, non-interfering Christ (and, in the background, an absent god) remains one of the great scenes in all of literature.

I guess it was too early in the history of ideas for D to see that there is no need to believe in Christ (by which I mean a historical Jesus who was also the second person of the Trinity) in order to preserve both moral values and some significant degree of freedom from oppression by state and/or church. The term “Christ Consciousness” wasn’t yet in the air. To me that phrase implies the ethics of compassion, non-judgment, and non-revenge.

But we could also call it the “Buddha Consciousness,” or “Higher Self” or, best of all, “Loving Kindness.” There is simply no need to invoke Christ.

Belief in the supernatural need not enter here at all. To me a kind person who believes in the value of kindness is more admirable than someone who is motivated by the supernatural carrot and stick of heaven and hell.

In fact it is sad to remember a minister’s objection to the idea of doing away with hell: “That would take away anyone’s motivation to follow Christ.” I think it’s precisely the threat of hell that weakens the appeal of Christianity.

By the way, I can't get over that article, "Christianity is not about being a good person." Obviously you don't need to be a Christian to be good, but somehow I always thought that Christianity WAS about being a good person. But the good minister explained with blazing clarity that Christianity is about sin and salvation; our duty is to god, not to fellow men. The essence of Christianity is the belief that “Jesus died for your sins.”

The readers’ comments revealed that he shocked more people than just me! But the article helped me get over any incipient nostalgia over the decline of Christianity. If it's not about being a kind person, if it’s all about “Jesus died for your sins,” then good riddance.
 
By the way, I can’t think of a single “sin” I ever committed that would merit death penalty. Perhaps community service. And not even that when I think of my trivial “sins” when I was a child — precisely the years when I was being brainwashed to believe that “Jesus died for your sins.”

*
SOME VALID QUESTIONS ABOUT THE RESURRECTION

“Now that the Easter Bunny is caged for another year, here's my question: If God raised Jesus from the dead, why not make it public so everyone could see and believe? If the empty tomb is a deal breaker -- all that gnashing of teeth and eternal damnation -- why be so secretive? What kind of God plays games like that?

I think it's more likely that it never happened. It's likely that our annual Easter hoopla was never supposed to be about raising Jesus from the dead. There's no call to remember it in the bible. In fact, the bible sets aside all kinds of days as religious holidays for believers, but no mention of Easter.

But what we do know is that ancient civilizations have been celebrating Easter for at least 5,000 years — long before Jesus and long before Judaism.

In fact, we can say that the driving theme of the entire human story has always been the "dawn of new day” — the resurrection of the earth, and the call to new life. Hence, every culture of antiquity found unique ways to celebrate the triumph of spring. And they called it by similar names — Ishtar, Eostre, Easter. You get the point.

We know that, in the 4th century, the Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, hijacked yet another popular festival (winter solstice comes to mind) and "repurposed" the old Easter holiday for their religious holy day. They made Easter a religious day for Christians only.

But the question remains: If Jesus wanted everyone in the world to know that he resurrected from the tomb, why didn't he make at least a one public appearance for history's sake? Why only to a handful of biased believers who didn't even know how to read or write?

Why not appear to the people who killed him — like say, Pontius Pilate, or Judas Iscariot, or the Sanhedrin Council who'd been plotting his death for years? If all these were too scary, then why not at least show up for Pilate's wife who, according to the bible, told her husband to leave the poor guy alone! That's honorable mention stuff right there.

Or better yet, why not go back to the vulgar crowds in Jerusalem -- the fickle folks who supposedly threw palms at his feet before they turned against him? These were the people who needed convincing, for crying out loud, not his mom and his best friends.

So now we've got a problem. All these lack of appearances in town mean that no legitimate historian, and not even a disinterested bystander, could ever report that they saw Jesus — even from a distance — after he was dead and buried.

Lets face it: Since the future of the world depended on it — not to mention the billions of people about to go to hell for lack of even a shred of evidence or logic — we're looking at a totally unfair and unjust religious belief system. This makes no sense. None. Nada. Zip. Zero.

We could argue that, “Jesus wanted to reward his disciples for their faithfulness, so thats why he didn’t let anyone else see him.”

But that means he put the whole burden on his disciples to go forth and convince the world. That makes no sense because they had no credibility — people knew they were already believers. And besides, they were not only illiterate, but they'd likely be dead before anyone else started to write about the life and times of Jesus of Nazareth.

In fact, it would be 40 more years before the anonymous "Mark" wrote about the death of Jesus, and guess what? Mark never mentioned a single sighting of Jesus, or the name of anyone who claimed he or she had ever SEEN Jesus after he died.

And then there's this: The tomb of Jesus was located at the thriving city of Jerusalem — the historic and religious center of the whole Jewish religion. Wait. Weren't these the same Jewish people whom Jesus said he came to save? So why did Jesus not at least go into Jerusalem after the resurrection, and shake a few hands?

Why would God not want the Jews of Jerusalem to see and hear for themselves that Jesus was alive and well? This makes absolutely no sense.

UNLESS ... there was no resurrection. Unless Jesus was actually a Jewish rabbi — and a revolutionary who turned the tables on the status quo. In that case, it all makes sense. The mission of Jesus was to bust down the doors of the encrusted, established religion of the day -- and bust the whole crowd of rich, religious hypocrites for the ways in which they oppressed the poor and the outcast. His mission was to call them out for their lack of love, compassion, grace, and basic decency. He busted them for failing to be human.

Their privilege had corrupted their humanity, and they didn't like being exposed and busted.

In that case, there was no need for a resurrection. Only a crucifixion.” ~ Noah Einstein

https://www.facebook.com/einsteinsgod/?fref=nf
Oriana:

The larger question here is Yahweh's secretiveness. If he is the only true god and all the other gods are false -- why not be more public? Why not reveal yourself to everyone in the world? A voice from the whirlwind, maybe, pillars of light, public announcements from above? Appearances in front of large gatherings in many different locations? Why let the Egyptians persist in their error of worshiping the cat goddess, for instance? Worse, why the progressive withdrawal —less and less communication as history marches on? Like so many scholars, Ehrman focuses on the contradictions between the four gospels, but Noah Einstein, simply an intelligent layman, addresses the even more bothersome issue of secretiveness, hiding, and silence (the silence being of course perfectly understandable if there is no one there).

Likewise I always wondered at the idea that Jesus spoke in parables because he did not want his message to be understood — at least not by many. If salvation depends on correct understanding, then this attitude seems uncharitable, to put it mildly. Of course a better explanation is that parables can have several meanings, so you don’t have to commit yourself — and you can always claim that the other person simply didn’t get it.

Don’t get me wrong: I like parables. They are excellent library games. And yet, wouldn’t some clarity and simplicity be appropriate when your whole eternity is at stake?

But that of course would reveal the lack of compelling answers. 

Suring off Santa Cruz; photo: Rob Sean Wilson

*
THE WISDOM OF NOT DELAYING

“How did you cross the flood?
— Without delaying, friend, and without struggling did I cross the flood.
But how could you do so?
— When delaying, friend, I sank, and when struggling, I was swept away. So it is by not delaying and not struggling that I have crossed the flood.”

Not delaying and not struggling. Above all: not delaying. After all, the greater the delay, the greater the agony, since the undone is a thorn in the mind.
 

*
THE JOY OF KALE
 
Kale is very high in beta carotene, vitamin K (also found in spinach and other greens), vitamin C, and rich in calcium. Kale is a source of two carotenoids, lutein and zeaxanthin. Kale, as with broccoli and other brassicas, contains sulforaphane (particularly when chopped or minced), a chemical with potent anti-cancer properties. Boiling decreases the level of sulforaphane; however, steaming, microwaving, or stir frying does not result in significant loss.

Along with other brassica vegetables, kale is also a source of indole-3-carbinol, a chemical which boosts DNA repair in cells and appears to block the growth of cancer cells. Kale has been found to contain a group of resins known as bile acid sequestrants, which have been shown to lower cholesterol and decrease absorption of dietary fat. Steaming significantly increases these bile acid binding properties.

Vitamin K2 Protects Your Heart and Helps Prevent Osteoporosis
 
Vitamin K2 helps to prevent hardening of the arteries, which is a common factor in coronary artery disease and heart failure. Research suggests vitamin K2 may help to keep calcium out of your artery linings and other body tissues, where it can cause damage. The latest studies show it's vitamin K2, rather than K1, in concert with vitamin D, that prevents calcification in your coronary arteries, thereby preventing cardiovascular disease.

(But the real reason for this post is the purplish tinge of the rose-like kale in the image.)
 
ending on beauty:

The cure for this
raucous world:
late cherry blossoms.

~ Issa

THE OTHER RESURRECTION: GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD; JOSEPH CONRAD’S ATHEIST ETHICS; RESURRECTION: NO RESUSCITATION OF A CORPSE; TO THE OPOSSUM

DYNGUS: EASTER MONDAY

Father always managed to splash me,
shouting, Shmingus-dyngus! —
laughing as I’d run, shaking off
a trail of drops. The Church frowned

on the puddles of this pagan baptism.
Nuns taught me I was a sinner.
in the town where I was born,
a naked baroque angel

held gilded scales to weigh
good deeds against sin.
Heaven was up, hell was down.
the soul huddled, a chilled bird.

Mother said, “There is no hell.
God would not be so cruel.”
At ten I shuddered at the heresy:
hell was where my mother was going.

*

At fourteen I said, “If God exists,
let him strike me with lightning.”
Waited, shaking with terror.
For five minutes I could hardly

breathe.
Pigeons cooed.
Broken sunlight
redeemed the rain-streaked masonry.

I began to walk fast, away
from that first-communion girl,
lilacs in her arms, moist and heavy,
veins crossing the silk of leaves.

*

Across an ocean of baroque clouds,
that other country still exists. Other children
pick up yellow pebbles
on a Baltic beach, believing it’s amber.

Another girl wakes on Easter Monday,
her father hidden in the kitchen.
The water in the basin
shivers with impatient sheen.

*

My cat wakes me up at dawn,
sky rimmed with a narrow gold.
I wade in the gathering
light of resurrection.

In the yard, spires of lilacs.
I agree with a chittering bird:
it is only practical to be happy.
Again I will climb the same

mountain, follow the bleached star
of the dry yucca where the trail
sharply turns. I agree once more
to the mortal price of love.

At dusk I come home to Mozart,
my one-candle vespers.
The notes shape a brief heaven.
Fog erases the pine-dark hills.


~ Oriana © 2016

The Weighing of Souls, Autun Cathedral, Burgundy, c. 1130 


In 2010, at an art colony in Vermont, I told the famous Polish poet Adam Zagajewski the story of how I waited to be struck with lightning for my blasphemy. He replied, in his expressionless way that worked very well in this situation, “Sometimes there is a delay.”

Nevertheless, back in that moment, at fourteen, I knew I could be wrong: what if the sky wasn’t as vacant as it seemed and the monstrous invisible god did exist? I began to shake with fear. But I was willing to die and suffer in hell for eternity for daring to think on my own. I chose to be sentenced to eternal torture rather than worship a cruel god who created hell. It was the moment of the greatest courage in my life.

Greater courage than going to America by myself at mere seventeen and a half? Yes, I think so, since not just my life but my eternity was at stake. But I knew that I couldn’t abide the church’s blackmail anymore. I could remain enslaved forever, or I could be free — even if ultimately doomed. The conviction of that doom stayed with me for years (I knew my “test” wasn’t a conclusive proof, though if did a lot to reassure me).

It took even longer to learn that my experience wasn’t unique: former believers began to open up and admit that sometimes that woke up at night, seized with the terror of hell. What a church does to a child can never be totally deleted. For me religion was chiefly about hell. You can leave a toxic religion, but that religion never leaves you. Not completely. God ceases to exist at the intellectual level, but not at the emotional level, where the fires of hell smolder still. I’m resigned to that. It’s not a major fear anymore. Is it really still there? Probably only at the unconscious level — it would take dementia or a psychotic breakdown to activate it.

What helped a lot is understanding more deeply that there is no afterlife — no disembodied, brain-free soul that detaches at the moment of death and goes off to be judged. Sure, in a way I knew that the moment I realized that Christianity was just another mythology. But I truly understood this only more recently thanks to the flame analogy. When a candle burns out, the flame doesn’t “go” anywhere. It simply ceases when the fuel that sustained it is used up.

It’s true that “something of us” may remain — a memory, or something we said. We may enter the collective psyche in some tiny and anonymous way. But that’s entirely different from the persistence of an individual consciousness.

As for that tiny something that may remain, please read this blog post, a personal favorite of mine:

http://oriana-poetry.blogspot.com/2011/12/immortality-of-influence.html

To return for a moment to the experience of waiting to be struck with lightning for a blasphemous thought — how ludicrous, and yet how horrific to have been brainwashed with the idea of supernatural surveillance and punishment to this extent. The visible universe is estimated to contain one hundred billion galaxies. That the ruler of the universe would be concerned with a thought passing through the mind of a teenage girl in Warsaw, and violate the laws of nature in order to punish her, is bizarre. It was a fine springtime day, a few small white clouds, no chance of a thunderstorm.

But . . . we were taught that god watches us 24/7, and sees every thought in our sinful heads. Put that kind of insane garbage into a child’s head, and you can expect some insane bit of behavior. That kind of indoctrination is clearly child abuse.

*

No, “Ishtar” is not pronounced “Easter.” That name comes from Ostra, or Oestre (think “East”), the Germanic goddess of spring. But otherwise, yes.

Easter is an ancient pagan holiday  that falls close to the spring equinox, a springtime celebration of fertility. When I was a little girl, my mother pointed out to me that eggs that I duly took to church on Great Saturday to be sprinkled with the holy water were a symbol of fertility and springtime. At that point I was already used to my somewhat schizoid reality: I totally believed in science, e.g. in evolution, the long length of geological eras, and the huge size of the universe — but didn’t yet dare to draw the logical conclusion that the biblical account (e.g. Eve created from Adam’s rib) was simply nonsense — or call it mythology, at times endearing, at other times dark and disturbing — and if so, then no ruling deity existed.

“THE WRATH OF ZEUS”
Igoumenitsa, Greece; Stavros Dafis

SPEAKING OF COURAGE: MARTIN LUTHER

I think I understand better now why I was so thrilled when during a history class I first learned about Martin Luther’s rebellion against the church. Later I went on to learn that he was far from being an admirable human being. Still, risking his life, he dared to think for himself and to speak his mind.

And if Luther said that there was no Purgatory — that Purgatory had been made up by the church so that people would be buying masses for the dead and indulgences supposed to release souls from the Purgatory sooner — if Purgatory was made up, what other things could also be made up? I didn’t yet dare to follow up that question, but a seed was tossed into my mind. My mother said there was no hell; Luther said there was no Purgatory — the unconscious mind starts working on this.

Luther also seemed right about the pagan customs incorporated by the church in the guise of being Catholic and holy. For instance, on Great Saturday I, and many other children, took a basket to church to be blessed. The basket contained onion-skin colored eggs, some bread, some sausage, and some green twigs — I was never told what plant it was, but including some young green leaves was obviously important — for decoration, I thought. Later it all made sense: it was a celebration of spring and fertility, and the hope of a plentiful food supply.

I liked the custom, just as I enjoyed watching the processions where icons and statues of Mary and various saints were paraded in the immediate vicinity of a church. In the countryside, a procession of this kind might actually lead into the fields, so the saints could bless the land. It was quite sweet, with singing and little girls tossing flower petals on the path ahead of the icons and statues. Idolatry? It’s all mythology, magic, theater. 

 
THE OTHER RESURRECTION: THE GREATEST STORY NEVER TOLD

“Do you know how many people the Bible says were raised from the dead on Easter weekend?

I have to point out to Christians, many of whom maintain that the Bible cannot be wrong, that in one place (and only one place) the Bible says that a whole bunch of people came out of their graves right after Jesus died on the afternoon of Good Friday and then walked around Jerusalem…a couple of days later.  Here’s what it says in the gospel attributed to Matthew about the moment that Jesus died:

   ~ At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people. ~ (Matthew 27:51-53; emphasis mine)

In all my years in church I don’t recall ever once hearing a preacher acknowledge from the pulpit that a bunch of people were raised from the dead and appeared to many on Easter weekend.  Have you ever heard one talk about this?  Surely somebody has addressed it at some point.  But most of them don’t, and never will.  I find that fascinating!

They’ve heard about the earthquake. They know all about the tearing of the veil.  I’ve heard that preached about many times.  I myself have taught before about the significance of the veil because the book of Hebrews builds on that symbolism and it is rich with theological import (incidentally we have zero external historical verification for that happening, but never mind that right now). But for all the messages and sermons and studies I’ve heard on the first part of that passage, I’ve heard almost nothing about a mass resurrection or about a subsequent flash mob in the middle of Jerusalem on Easter weekend.

Does anybody really believe that this fantastic story happened? I’m not sure even Christians believe this happened.  Preachers don’t talk about it, and most Christians don’t even seem aware this story is even in there.  It’s the greatest story never told. The few who know it’s there just scratch their heads and say, “I’m not really sure what to do with that.”  This story is problematic for several reasons.

First of all, no other gospel writer says a word about a mass resurrection. This story is unique to Matthew’s gospel.  If something this dramatic really happened, why did no other gospel writer say a word about it?  And not only that, but nobody else ever says a word about it again, ever—not Paul, not Peter, not James or John—nobody!  That’s insane.  If this was supposed to have really happened, you’d think it would show up somewhere.  It should show up everywhere. But it never does again.

Even the details of the story are really fuzzy. It says there was an earthquake when Jesus died.  It was so big that “rocks split.” It’s unclear whether or not that was the cause of the graves opening, but what’s clear is that it says a bunch of people came back from the dead at that moment. How long had they been dead? Were they decomposed or had they been resurrected in fresh form? And how long did they hang around their graves before they came into town to circulate among the townspeople? All weekend? It says they were raised on Friday afternoon but curiously it says they didn’t go into town until after the resurrection. What did they do during all that time?

This story really is a fly in the ointment for the infallibilists among evangelicals and fundamentalists.  I know not everybody is hung up on having a perfect Bible, but if there’s any place they care about insisting it can’t be wrong, it’s right here on Easter weekend.  They may have decided the Bible can be wrong about common ancestry, or a worldwide flood, or even the Exodus or how many wives and concubines Solomon really had, but not this.

 Bible Story That Nobody Believes

Just to appease my curiosity I spent the better part of a Saturday in my old conservative seminary’s library rounding up as many commentaries on this passage as I could find. I surveyed the whole gamut of biblical scholarship from the most liberal to the most conservative and do you wanna know what I discovered?

Almost none of them think this really happened. Even the conservative scholars. Even the ones committed to biblical inerrancy. The Word Biblical Commentary has this to say about the passage:

    ~ A surprising number of commentators sidestep the historical question altogether. Those who do raise it can be found to use terms such as “puzzling,” “strange,” “mysterious.” Stalwart commentators known for their conservatism are given to hesitance here…

    We should not, of course, rule out a priori that Matthew may be recording historical events in these verses. If God raised Jesus from the dead, he surely can have raised a number of saints prior to the time of the general resurrection…The problem is that the event makes little historical sense, whereas what does make sense is the theological point that is being made. ~

[Theologians] who are still tied to the pulpit in one way or another cannot openly admit that they don’t think this story really happened. That would get them in far too much hot water. Those who write commentaries for their benefit must also be extremely judicious in the language they choose to explain the many things wrong with this story. Most have to obfuscate and equivocate and say things like Raymond Brown says in his famous commentary here:

  ~  …this popular, poetic description is deliberately vague—its forte is atmosphere, not details…to make a matter of major concern their literal historicity is to fail to understand their nature as symbols and the literary genre in which they are presented. ~

Except that’s not really how the story is being told, is it?  The writer of the gospel of Matthew isn’t speaking poetically here, no matter what parallels can be found in either Old Testament symbolism or contemporary Roman folklore. This story ventures beyond apocalyptic poetry and claims that the risen dead marched into Jerusalem and showed themselves to the residents, presumably as further proof that something supernatural has just happened.  That’s how the story goes.  And nobody who’s really wrestled with the implications seems to really think that happened.

Which means we’ve got a double standard at work here.  The story of Jesus rising from the dead has to be true. But nobody in his right mind can make a good case that this other part of the story makes any sense.  So they sweep it under the rug and then tell you to stop scrutinizing the story so meticulously.  “You’re asking the wrong questions,” they say. “Pay no attention to that over there, only look at this over here.  That stuff over there is mysterious, and we’re not meant to understand.”

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/2015/03/29/the-greatest-story-never-told/

Oriana:

I seem to remember (though I can’t swear to it) having heard the passage read in church, but with no comment whatever — whereas the earthquake, the solar eclipse, and the tearing of the veil did get a lot of dramatic emphasis.

I'm fairly certain that I heard in church and during religion lessons about the earthquake splitting boulders and the graves opening up. But it seems we were never told about the dead rising from those graves and walking around the city -- just as we were never presented with the passage in Mark that states that the family of Jesus came to take him away, saying that Jesus was "out of his mind" (the Patheos article discusses this too).

But now the cat is out of the bag, so to speak: the dead are out of their graves. What happened later to those other resurrectees? After having visited with friends and relatives, did they just return to their tombs and resumed being dead? What a drag that would be, after their  little walk and socializing . . .

But I wasn’t overly concerned with that. Perhaps because my grandmother was a seamstress, the immediate question in my mind as a child was not theological at all. Instead, I was curious if the torn temple veil got sewn up again. Surely the fabric was expensive, and it would be wasteful to just throw it out and get a new veil (obviously I didn’t grow up with American mentality about replacing rather than mending). Of course I knew that it was best to keep such questions to myself. 

Of course the mass resurrection mentioned only in Matthew is not the only story that is to be highly doubted. Later I learned that there was never any census that required anyone to return to the town of their birth; Mary and Joseph were not likely to be names of the parents of Jesus, but dignified names out of the Old Testament; there was no “slaughter of the innocents” and thus no flight into Egypt and return from Egypt (the story was created to serve as an echo of the Exodus);  and more. There are whole books devoted to debunking the historicity of the gospels. Obviously the correct reading is mythological. If there is an inspiring message to be found in those stories, wonderful. But first of all, we have to come to grips with the fact that this is a mythology.

Roses are excellent at resurrection; here is my Rio Samba, 8 weeks or so after a severe pruning

BISHOP SPONG: THE RESURRECTION WAS NOT THE RESUSCITATION OF A CORPSE
 
~ “When one reads the New Testament in the order in which these books were written, a fascinating progression is revealed. Paul, for example, writing between the years 50 and 64 or some 20 to 34 years after the earthly life of Jesus came to an end, never describes the resurrection of Jesus as a physical body resuscitated after death. There is no hint in the Pauline corpus that one who had died later walked out of his grave clothes, emerged from the tomb and was seen by his disciples.

What Paul does suggest is that Easter meant that God had acted to reverse the verdict that the world had pronounced on Jesus by raising Jesus from death into God. It was, therefore, out of God in a transforming kind of heavenly vision that this Jesus then appeared to certain chosen witnesses. Paul enumerates these witnesses and, in a telling detail, says that this was the same Jesus that Paul himself had seen. No one suggests that Paul ever saw a resuscitated body.

Please note that the story of the Ascension had not been written when these Pauline words were formed. Paul did not envision the Resurrection as Jesus being restored to life in this world but as Jesus being raised into God. It was not an event in time but a transcendent and transforming truth.

Paul died, according to our best estimates, around the year 64 C.E. The first Gospel was not written until the early 70’s. Paul never had a chance to read the Easter story in any Gospel. The tragedy of later Christian history is that we read Paul through the lens of the Gospels. Thus we have both distorted Paul and also confused theology.

When Mark, the first Gospel, was written the Risen Christ never appears. The last time Jesus is seen comes when his deceased body is taken from the cross and laid in the tomb. Mark’s account of the Resurrection presents us with the narrative of mourning women confronting an empty tomb, meeting a messenger who tells them that Jesus has been raised and asking these women to convey to the disciples that Jesus will meet them in Galilee. Mark then concludes his Gospel with a picture of these women fleeing in fear, saying nothing to anyone (16:1-8).

So abrupt was this ending that people began to write new endings to what they thought was Mark’s incomplete story. Two of those endings are actually reproduced in the King James Version of the Bible as verses 9-20. But thankfully, these later creations have been removed from the text of Mark in recent Bibles and placed into footnotes. The sure fact of New Testament scholarship is that Mark’s Gospel ended without the Risen Christ ever being seen by anyone.

Both Matthew, who wrote between 80-85, and Luke, who wrote between 88-92, had Mark to guide their compositions. Both changed, heightened and expanded Mark. It is fascinating to lift those changes into consciousness and to ask what was it that motivated Matthew and Luke to transform Mark’s narrative. Did they have new sources of information? Had the story grown over the years in the retelling?

The first thing to note is that Matthew changes Mark’s story about the women at the tomb. First, the messenger in Mark becomes a supernatural angel in Matthew’s story. Next Matthew says the women do see Jesus in the garden. They grasp him by the feet and worship him. This is the first time in Christian history that the Resurrection is presented as physical resuscitation. It occurs in the 9th decade of the Christian era. It should be noted that it took more than 50 years to begin to interpret the Easter experience as the resuscitated body of the deceased Jesus. When Matthew presents the story of the risen Jesus to the disciples, it is on a mountaintop in Galilee where he appears out of the sky armed with heavenly power. Recall once again that when Matthew wrote this narrative the story of Jesus’ ascension had not yet entered the tradition.

Luke follows Mark’s story line about the women at the tomb, stating that they do not see Jesus in the garden on Easter morning. Luke, however, has turned Mark’s messenger into two angelic beings. He has also transferred the locale of Easter to Jerusalem specifically denying Mark’s words spoken through the messenger that Jesus will meet them in Galilee. Luke has heightened dramatically the physicality of Jesus’ resuscitated body. In Luke, the resuscitated Jesus walks, talks, eats, teaches and interprets. He also appears and disappears at will. He invites the disciples to handle his flesh. He asserts that he is not a ghost. Finally in order to remove this physically resuscitated Jesus from the earth, Luke develops the story of Jesus’ Ascension.

Even in the Ascension narrative, however, Luke is not consistent. In the last chapter of his Gospel the Ascension takes place on Easter Sunday afternoon. In the first chapter of Acts, which Luke also writes, the Ascension takes place 40 days after Easter. Whereas the messenger in Mark, who becomes an angel in Matthew, directs the disciples to Galilee for a meeting with the risen Christ, Luke specifically denies any Galilean resurrection tradition. He orders the disciples to remain in Jerusalem until they are endowed with power from on high. The narrative is clearly growing.

In John, the Fourth Gospel (95-100), the physicality of the Resurrection is even more enhanced. In the 20th chapter of this Gospel Jesus appears first to Mary Magdalene in the garden and says to her, “Mary do not cling to me.” One cannot cling to something that is non-physical. Then John suggests that Jesus ascends immediately into heaven before appearing, presumably out of heaven, that night to the disciples, who are missing Thomas. Though Jesus appears able to enter an upper room in which the windows have been closed and the doors locked, he is once again portrayed as being quite physical. This physical quality is further enhanced a week later when Jesus makes a second appearance to the disciples, this time with Thomas present. It is in this narrative that Thomas is invited to touch the nail prints and to examine the place in his side into which the spear had been hurled. All of these appearances take place in Jerusalem.

Chapter 21 of John’s Gospel portrays a Galilean appearance much later in time after the disciples have actually returned to their fishing trade. Here Jesus directs them to a great catch of fish, 153 of them to be specific. Then he eats with them. Finally he restores Peter after his three-fold denial.

When these biblical data are assembled and examined closely, two things become clear. First something of enormous power gripped the disciples following the crucifixion that transformed their lives. Second, it was some fifty years before that transforming experience was interpreted as the resuscitation of a three days dead Jesus to the life of the world. Our conversation about the meaning of Easter must begin where these two realities meet.” ~

http://johnshelbyspong.com/sample-essays/the-resurrection/

Oriana:

Paul seems to be saying that Jesus “appeared” to him [Paul], and to the disciples shortly after his death, as a heavenly being, or a spirit body. The word used by Paul in reference to both himself and the disciples is one that can be interpreted as a “having a vision” rather than experiencing a physical reality. Jesus wasn’t physically “seen”; rather, he “appeared.”

We know that one of the most common form of hallucination is bereavement visions; for instance, the recently dead person seems to be walking just ahead. We may even run up to that person, and only then see it’s a stranger after all, sometimes not even especially similar to the deceased. Or we may hear the person’s voice or certain other sounds indicating the deceased is nearby. I speak both from personal experience and that of friends and others.

A simpler explanation is that “historical Jesus” never existed and that we are dealing here with another dying and rising god. The resurrection story developed during a cultural era when dying and rising gods were nothing new. Even if historical Jesus existed, the existing death-and resurrection narratives would have likely influenced the story.
Attis, Ostia Antica

JOSEPH CONRAD’S ATHEIST ETHICS

from Milosz’s “The Land of Ulro”: “Intellectual freedom in a Catholic country always goes hand in hand with atheism, and a comparison of [G’s] aristocratic atheism with [P’s] peasant atheism would make a splendid topic. As would the careers of other Polish atheists. The son of the devoutly Christian Apollo Korzeniowski, Joseph Conrad, could say: “The starry sky above me, the moral law within me” — and the inspiration for his irreligious ethics need not have come from Kant: Seneca would have sufficed.”

Fascinated, I googled Conrad’s views on religion, and got this from the British Humanist Association:

“He disliked the narrowness of his upbringing, particularly his father’s religious zeal. Later in life he wrote to a friend: “It’s strange how I always, from the age of 14, disliked the Christian religion, its doctrines, ceremonies and festivals … Christianity has lent itself with amazing facility to cruel distortion … and has brought an infinity of anguish to innumerable souls – on this earth.”

(Oriana: This reminds me of Nietzsche’s: “Religions are at bottom systems of cruelty.”)

“As a young man, he became fascinated by the sea and sailed to many places, especially in Africa and Asia, first as a sailor and then as a captain. He was saddened to see the divisions caused by religious belief in the many countries he visited. He came to look on humanity not as different nationalities or races but simply as people. It was the brotherhood and sisterhood of all human beings that concerned him. He saw this broken by advocates of the many, and differing, religions practiced in the world. His boyhood had made him distrust dogmatic attitudes of this kind.

He read an essay, A Free Man’s Worship, by the famous philosopher and humanist, Bertrand Russell, which said: ‘We should worship only the God created by our own love of the good.’ Conrad wrote to Russell saying, ‘For the marvelous pages on the worship of a free man, the only return one can make is that of deep admiring affection.”

His religious skepticism appears in his novels. In Under Western Eyes, he writes: “A belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are capable of every wickedness.” In Heart of Darkness he says, “We live, as we dream – alone.” And Under Western Eyes shows his humanist morality: “All a man can betray is his conscience.” One of the main histories of English literature says that although in his writing Conrad was a realist, he was also “a thinker and a poet”; that in his work there is “a profound ethical element”; and his “idealism lies in the sense of the unknown which we brush past at every moment,” an unusual way of referring to his agnostic view of life.

Joseph Conrad admired other writers with a humanistic, rationalist outlook. To John Galsworthy, the novelist and playwright, he wrote, making clear his own rejection of dogma: “Skepticism is the tonic of mind, the tonic of life, the agent of truth. It is the way of art and salvation.”

Oriana: 

Apollo Korzeniowski (Conrad’s father) seems insufferable to me mostly because he was a fanatical nationalist. I haven’t thought of the Catholic angle. The two were no doubt fused together, a phenomenon I later observed in the Catholic church under the Communist rule, which I too found repugnant, yet another way the church tried to control the masses, the idolatry of “God and Fatherland” as a cover for repressive right-wing mentality.

Conrad chose stoicism just as he chose to write in English, though his fluency in French was perfect (he spoke it without an accent) — perhaps because there is something heroic about going with the difficult, but maybe primarily because he admired both the language of Shakespeare and the English culture with its stoic ideal.

I wonder if “aristocratic atheism” and “peasant atheism,” terms that Milosz doesn't explain, form a kind of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza pair. I was fascinated to read that there used to be a lot of anti-clericalism in the Polish countryside, including songs about the corruption and predatory sexual behavior of priests.

Certain Poles accused Conrad of betraying Poland and his native language, but Conrad had his reply: “A man can betray only his conscience.” I am so glad he didn't yield to “patriotic” pressure, which must have been enormous.

And I realize that the loathsome "God and Fatherland" Catholicism that poisoned my childhood must have been only a fraction of what young Conrad was force-fed. To recover from that, to see life and the world in a more universal light, what a journey. And finally, to transform all that pain into the honey of art.
The monument to Joseph Conrad in Gdynia

TO THE OPPOSUM

To the opossum I saw one night picking off grubs (or something) from my Jurassic araukaria, and who got scared at seeing me and ran away: Come back! My lawn is your lawn, my tree is your tree.

ending on beauty

I intended
Never to grow old —
But the temple bell sounds.

~ Jokun, 17th century
 (translated by R. H. Blyth)


 

Charles:

Had to look up Dyngus. Now the poem makes sense and is beautiful. But your commentary on going face to face with God and possibly end up in Hell is so powerfully courageous and is more than beautiful. It is truly inspirational.

I also love your light-hearted treatment of  Bible Story That Nobody Believes. If I was teaching a midrash about it, I would have everybody embellish the story even more so they could see even more how obviously ridiculous the story is.

I gained a new appreciation for the opossum.

Oriana:

Thanks for the lovely comments. I hope that readers who aren’t sure google Dyngus. All of a sudden I am also once more in awe of the creative process: how did I connect all the things in that poem? Of course it all flowed from the cognitive-creative unconscious, without any conscious deliberation. That came only during revision, when I changed a few words.

The wild story in Matthew deserves more attention since it throws into question everything else that’s in the gospels and in the bible in general. Should we take any of it literally? What supportive evidence would it require?

Just recently I learned that the Mormon church used to preach that Jesus was married to multiple women and had children — and that some members of the Mormon church were actually genetic descendants of Jesus. That claim was later dropped. What about various other claims? But we know there is no end of making up stories — and usually no harm when we know a story is fiction. It’s when fiction is mistaken for facts that serious harm can result.