If Humans Were Gods

The premise of Rael's book Intelligent Design is that Earth was a scientific experiment created by an alien species that remarkably resembled highly advanced humans. The ensuing creation narrative that Rael is told by these aliens is a series of scientific explanations for biblical verses, an explanation so inherently tied to human experiences and understandings that it no longer felt spiritual. If the claims that the creators, Elohim, are aliens is ignored, the story is quite simply how human understanding of science could explain the existence of life. Using scientific logic to reason through the biblical creation narrative is perhaps the most human explanation that could possibly be given, as it does not allow for the divine to have knowledge that could never be attained by humans. Rael consistently says, in fact, that humans can gain the scientific knowledge their creators have, that the only thing making the Elohim divine is more knowledge because of a longer span of existence. Essentially this means that the Elohim and humans are the same, they created humans but they are not really divine. So, although the fact that they're aliens is meant to make you think they are like gods, this creation story is more or less a story of humanity creating humanity, or if humans were gods.

What's So Hard About Inclusion?

The numerous examples within Dr. Chancey's writing of biblical studies in current public school curriculum leave little doubt in my mind that what's being taught is always biased, and frequently unabashedly so. What I wonder is why, if the Bible needs to come into the classroom, it can't be accompanied by other religious texts such as the Qur'an and Talmud/Torah. I understand the argument that religion plays an important social role, and studying religion is absolutely viable for public schools, but to specifically study the Bible shows inherent bias. In order for a public school to talk about religion, namely the Bible, I think the rule should be that other religions are examined with equal thoroughness and from an academic standpoint. Instead of masquerading Bible classes as English or Social Studies, public schools could, much like higher education, offer religion courses that examined religious claims from a non-theological standpoint. The inclusion of specifically Christian theological beliefs in public schooling is, to me, shockingly wrong.

Why hasn't this solution been accepted by school districts? To me, the obvious solution to one group demanding their scripture be involved in schooling is to offer a course where multiple scriptures are involved and viewed impartially. Chancey notes that in school districts with educators who have more education in religion tend to have less biased curriculum, but they're still only speaking about one scripture, one religion, so even these educated attempts are biased essentially. If the Bible needs to be in schools, then so do other religious scriptures, plain and simple.

Does Berlinerblau Still Work?

My main question after this week's readings is whether or not the theories posed by the authors can be said to hold for this election cycle. I'm focusing on Berlinerblau as that's the reading I'm covering during discussion, and I agreed with many of his conclusions about recent elections, and the rapid increase in religious speech during presidential events. If I understand correctly, he posed a theory that, unless the secular side of America became more effective, religious speech would increasingly show up in political speech.

Now that we're in the middle of a presidential race, I wonder if his theory holds true. Certainly, religious speech has appeared in debates thus far, but for his theory to hold true it would have to be present more than in previous elections. I don't know if this argument holds true. From doing research, I know Cruz comes from a highly religious family, but it seems like he's somewhat minimized the amount of biblical speech in his debates. To be fair, I haven't watched all of them, but I have watched a few and it seems like by-and-large, thanks to Trump's version of rhetoric, that biblical references aren't what the crowds are shouting for now, being set aside for bold accusations, name calling, and extreme plans that hinge on fears held by right wing Americans. In my opinion, Berlinerblau was spot on when talking about previous elections, but things have shifted and I don't know if the slope will continue to increase.

"Give the people what they want."- Timothy Beal

I found a video of Timothy Beal speaking about different versions of the Bible, at around 30 minutes he starts to speak about Biblezines and his thoughts on their popularity and role in modern Christianity. I find it particularly interesting that 'The Way' was a nonprofit magazine targeted at high schoolers and was hugely successful, and that this initial success is what created the enormous surge of Biblezines. These later, for-profit magazines realized two things; first, the more specific they could make their markets, the more money they could make. Rather than just having a Biblezine for men and a Biblezine for women, or simply a single Biblezine like the format of 'The Way', for-profit producers of Biblezines came up with as many different niches as they could in order to sell as many different Biblezines as possible. Second, they realized that average American Christians have been raised to believe that the Bible holds all of God's answers for living, and that the actual content of the Bible might leave many people with questions. So, as Timothy Beal puts it, they give the people what they want by including content related to their lives, for example the executive men's Biblezine titled 'Align' that recommends how to grill steaks, along with scripture and in the package of a Bible, essentially giving readers what they want- answers to life's questions that are understood to be Biblically inspired. Beal and Kaell make the argument that Biblezines have a more serious place in American Christianity than one might originally assume, and I would have to agree with that after this week's readings.

Confusing the Message

As several of my classmates have pointed out thus far, the story of Adam and Eve has been influential in starkly contrasting opinions on gender, sex, and sexuality. From groups like the CDD using Biblical passages to support gendered violence, to sexualized marketing created for a myriad of products, the Bible's first celeb couple is constantly employed as corroboration. Here's my question, can everyone, or anyone, be right? Basically, was the Biblical story of Adam and Eve originally meant to convey a specific message about marital roles and sexuality, which would mean the original message of the passage would be the 'right' way to think about these topics and others would be wrong. Or, was the story meant to purely focus on the creation of humans and original sin as forbidden (nonsexual) knowledge, meaning the Biblical passage shouldn't be support for arguments about sexuality, etc.

I tend to think that the originally intended message of Adam and Eve's story probably had more to do with gender roles and marital roles than with sex and sexuality, but you could certainly make the argument that they were trying to send other messages as well. Over all, I think most uses of the Adam and Eve story are confusing any original message badly, and it's fascinating to see how each group does it with the utmost assurance.

Early American's Use of the Bible

To me, a common theme in this week's readings is early Americans looking to the Bible for corroboration and justification. One reading stated that most likely the Geneva Bible was the first English translation in America, popular precisely because it contains annotations and explanations, which speaks to their desire for comprehension, but comprehension from and for their specific point of view. The creation of a Woman's Bible is another example of the exact same goal, to take a text and spin it to your point of view. I doubt they viewed what they were doing as 'spin', but I would argue it most certainly was.

For many early Americans, the departure from Europe was spurred by religious beliefs, and if the Bible supports your decision, that's highly appealing. The use of religious texts as support for political or social change is common, is occurring in this current presidential election, and I think a main factor for the Bible in early America.

Canonical Confusion

    The idea of what constitutes canon has been a subject frequently brought up in this class, and seems to me to be an important question when looking at the formation of early English bibles. As we learned in the readings, Englishmen were required to be members of the church when English bibles were first being created. As the throne switched back and forth between Roman Catholic, Protestant, and finally Church of England rule, the bibles that were in use changed as well. Hamlin and Jones note that many people would secretly use their preferred bible translation when another was made the official bible of England's churches, which leads me to question which text at the time, if any, were canonical? If the ruling power names one bible canon and the masses name another bible as canon, are either of them well enough supported to be considered a true canon? How did Englishmen reconcile the fact that they worshipped with one bible at church and another at home? It seems to me that at this time the idea of canon was a much more important concept for the aristocracy than for the average citizen.
   Another interesting point is the reason why there was such a great struggle by monarchs over which text is preferred, it speaks to how crucial religion was to the control of a population. Originally English bibles were feared by leaders because they thought it would incite revolts, and the fact that they had this fear at all goes to show what a great influence religion played in Tudor England.
   

Medieval Practices Today?

In "The Medieval Canon",  van Liere states that while a canon had been established during the Medieval period, non-canonical texts were popularly used because of their ability to fill in the gaps and answer questions about canonical texts. Van Liere also states that with the creation of the printing press in the Middle Ages, the inclusion of non-canonical texts dropped dramatically. I'd like to argue that the inclusion of non-canonical texts didn't disappear after the creation of the printing press, but that they moved to different mediums. A printing press meant that there was no way to add non-canonical texts into the canon as it was printed the same way every time, but the insight non-canonical texts provided were and are still valuable.

As Yoshiko Reed spoke about last week, we can still see how these non-canonical texts are used and interpreted today. Even depictions of canonical books, like the movie 'Noah' that we watched a clip from in class, push outside of what is written in order to explain things the canonical text cannot. If these interpretations are happening in our world, where a set canon is widely known and accepted, I find it very likely that non-canonical texts and interpretations of canonical texts were used for understanding even after the creation of the printing press in the Middle Ages.

Divine Child Acts Like a Real Baby

    One major lesson I've taken away from Religion classes I've taken is that each depiction of Jesus uses his figure in a different way, centering on specific aspects of his character in order to present him in a certain light: teacher, martyr, prophet, etc. So, when reading the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, one of the questions I asked myself was 'how are they portraying their Jesus?' And overall, the answer is not great. It's confusing to me, actually- the entire gospel is Jesus repeatedly enacting miracles, which speaks to a culture trying to assert the divinity of Jesus as a figure. Yet all of these miracles are spurred by extremely childish reactions to other children, which to me is asserting his human nature. 

    The image of a being with divine powers acting like a baby is highly contradictory to me; I can understand a society's writings depicting Jesus as a child performing miracles to perform a purpose, and I can understand a society's writings depicting Jesus as a child being short-tempered to perform a purpose, but the two together seem to be images of Jesus from two different cultural understandings of Jesus' figure. I struggle to understand how they understood Jesus as divinity when all of his miracles were so malicious, able to act as God yet behaving like a child. To me, even a child with divine powers would be expected to behave with the wisdom of God; that Jesus lacks this in IGT leads me to believe they saw Jesus as somewhat separate from God, otherwise they would have depicted the Christ Child behaving in a more gracious way. 

What it Takes to Create Canon

   Throughout our classes so far, the question of how to define 'scripture' or 'canon' has come up frequently, and so far, our answers have been somewhat muddled- the definition can be different for different people and different times, which in many ways utterly defeats the purpose of having a canon at all. Dungan discusses this seeming paradox, that a fixed set of texts isn't actually fixed, an argument that leads me to believe a true canon might not exist in today's world. Since the definition of what is canon is left up to the individual, a single version of canon is impossible.
   This wasn't the case when Constantine formed his canon. Rather than the decision resting with the individual, Constantine's canon was law- a legally fixed group of texts to be recognized as superior to others. While his subjects may have disagreed with his choices, while some might have treated texts outside his canon with more reverence, they did so with the understanding that their text lay outside of the formal canon.
   My point, I suppose, is that individual ideas of what texts are worthy of canonization will always be varied, people will believe that their favorite texts are the most important, but without a legal ruling on what is considered 'canon' like Constantine's, it is virtually impossible to define what is 'canon' because there is no one accepted version.  

Jesus the Orator

When discussing what and how Jesus might have read, Beal makes the argument on page 95 that perhaps rather than simply reading aloud, Jesus would chant the scriptures in a traditional fashion. In class, someone proposed that perhaps Jesus was not reading from the scripture in order to do this, but instead was reciting a memorized oral piece, which was common at the time.
This idea intrigues me, as as I happen to agree with Dr. Satlow's point that it's unlikely Jesus was literate. However, I think it is probable that oral tradition would have been passed on to him, rather than the ability to read. So, the idea of Jesus holding scripture in order to appear knowledgable while reciting oral tradition makes a lot of sense to me. As we discussed in class, many of the earliest recordings of Jesus' teachings aren't things from the Torah and rather more like life lessons, which supports the idea that what we think of as scripture might not have been as important during Jesus' life. The image that this gave me was of Jesus as an orator using rhetoric and oral tradition, rather than scripture as Beal suggests.

A Modern Day Comparison

While reading about the role of scribes in antiquity, I couldn't help but wonder what a modern day equivalent of such a job would be, if there is one at all. For a while I was stumped, I couldn't think of a profession that requires extensive education in order to transcribe and 'translate' text. Then, I started to read the side-by-side quotations Crawford includes from Jubilees and Exodus, where the first is clearly pulling inspiration from the second, but only in wording or small phrases rather than large chunks of text copied verbatim. I was immediately reminded of what we did in my poetry class yesterday- we took a poem by an acclaimed author, and each wrote our own version borrowing as much from the original as we wanted. Just like the scribes, poetry students are encouraged to deviate from what's already been written, with the understanding that the provided structure and content are strong examples. It isn't strange to have some student work that turn out a lot like the original with some words changed here and there, while other students made more radical choices. While some poetry students admire the greats as if they were gods, most of us don't have the same emotional or spiritual connection to the texts that the scribes probably had. All in all though, in my opinion the actual tasks carried out by both groups are surprisingly similar.

The Covenant of a Vassal State

While reading How the Bible Became Holy, one specific passage caught my attention and so I'd like to focus on it for this post, despite the fact that it isn't central to the overall message of what we read. Starting on page 26, Satlow describes the covenant between Israel and Assyria as loyalty for military protection, terms that sound surprisingly similar to the Covenant Code found in Exodus- a passage that became core to Israelite beliefs.
Satlow's comparison shows, then, that in actuality the Covenant Code would have been a fairly commonplace piece of writing with a format that was meant to be recognizable to any scribe. Originating possibly as a tool for scribes, this snippet's inclusion in the Bible was not foreseen at its inception. With the understanding that a part of the Bible considered crucial today was not so at the time of its origin, it becomes clear that no section of the Bible as we know it was meant to be wholly authoritative, and that many texts' origin stories might not be as glamorous as one might expect.
What I take from this is that the popular idea of reading the Bible as a complete guide was never the intended use for any of the texts originally, but rather an ideal imposed as the Bible became holy.