Last post on Gove's Bible nonsense (probably)

Education has continued to become a more horrible place to work since I last blogged. The proposed changes to Ofsted mean that everyone has to desperately revise the way lessons work in order that we can tick the new boxes that mean you know how to do your job. This is even more tedioius and time consuming than you can imagine.

On top of that, the failure of all the teaching unions to keep a coherent strike strategy to stop the pension tax thus far means we're stuck with being screwed even more for at least a while.

And now Gove's managed to find some rich Tory fucks to pay for his narcissistic Bible project. I think I'll see if the English department want ours, since it's fuck all use in RE - as I've mentioned before.

Now Dawkins has chipped in with something fatuous.

I am a little shocked at the implication that not every school library already possesses a copy. Can that be true? What do they have, then? Harry Potter? Vampires? Or do they prefer one of those modern translations in which "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, all is vanity" is lyrically rendered as "Perfectly pointless, says the Teacher. Everything is pointless"? That is Ecclesiastes, 1:2, as you'll find it in the Common English Bible. And you can't get much more common than that, although admittedly the God's Word translation provides stiff competition with "absolutely pointless" and the Good News Bible challenges strongly with "useless, useless".

Where to start? Labour decided that not all schools need a library any more and the Tories apparently agree. So the first sentence should probably read 'I am a little shocked that not all schools have a library,' which is a sentence I could agree with wholeheartedly. As it stands, it's little more than petulent whingeing. Our school library doesn't have a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, which is surely a crime against literature.

Then the further whingeing - 'they don't have a 17th century version of a book that is available in many more accessible versions but which I have a nostalgic attachment to because it reminds me of the old days at public school, but I BET they've got some of those books kids actually enjoy like that Harry Twilight fellow, eh?'

I suppose what's getting to me is the way that this whole issue seems to have become a faux-battleground where middle-England can indulge its nostalgia for some mythical Jennings/Mallory Towers-era of education (a world without If... and with no memory of Kes), and engage in yet another defence of white middle-class privilege against the evil hordes of philistines with their 'pointless'es and their 'useless'es on their Klout Twitterbooks - why, public school-educated white men are the *real* oppressed class!

And this is the battle they pick? Honestly, what do we all actually, in the sense of 'how does this help education' rather than 'how does it make Mail readers feel', gain from Gove's vanity project, other than the chance to bury a book (with his name printed in gold on the spine, no less) at the back of the stockroom?

It's not relevant to Key Stage 3 English or RE. It's not part of any of the major GCSE RE specs and is highly unlikely to form part of the English or Eng Lit GCSE specs either, I suspect. It's not useful for A Level New Testament study either, for the twin reasons of unreliability and inaccessibility. What a pointless, pointless act to become a national priority that requires the intervention of the Secretary of State and multiple comment pieces in newspapers.

So that's it. The only national story relating to RE in my memory and it's a bunch of fatuous reactionary dicks belly-aching about whether people should be made to read more 'thees' and 'thous' than they would be expected to if they aren't from Staffordshire. And RE is NOT ABOUT THAT.

Trust me, I'm a Marxist RE teacher.

Oh, for Gods' Sake

There are many reasons not to like Michael Gove. But aside from his elitism, parochialism, incompetence, viciousness, fundamental opposition to the concept of public service, his general meanness of spirit and possession of less charm than Arnold J Rimmer, his stupidity is what is currently annoying me.

This isn't actually related to the strikes - that's a whole other seething cauldron of outrage. This is his move to put a copy of the KJV in every school in the land - with a foreword of his own.

OK, it's only 2 lines, so it's not worth getting too worked up about. But he's not a Biblical scholar. He can't have anything to add to the text other than his own opinion on it - and who the fuck cares what he thinks about the Bible? It's only a few months since he tried to remove the statutory requirement to teach RE from the national curriculum, and has completely opposed including RE in the EBacc. And judging from his behaviour, he clearly isn't much of a Christian either, so sending round copies of his no doubt awe-inspiring thoughts on the KJV just smacks of arrogance.

What really annoys me about this is not the redundancy of spending money at a time when he's cutting everything else on a book that all schools have plenty of anyway (as the National Secular Society have pointed out).

There are 2 major annoyances that outrank this:

1. He doesn't seem to be in a rush to send out copies of other major religious texts. The excuse for this surfeit of self-promotion is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the KJV. Last year was the 100th anniversary of the first simultaneous English-Arabic translation of the Qur'an. I don't remember a free copy turning up at school.




2. The KJV is not a good translation. Most of the NT is based on a single, late, Greek edition and from an educational point of view the NRSV is much better, being a modern English edition based on decades of study by scholars piecing together a representative text based on the widest possible selection of the most accurate available texts. Personally, I wouldn't use the KJV in teaching.

In short, another day, another reason plethora of reasons to dislike the secretary of state for education.

Religulous: I do not think it means, what you think it means, Bill Maher

I've been doing a bit of research on religious differences and conflict recently, and came across a couple of documentaries on the subject. One of them made me quite angry. Here’s why.

RELIGULOUS!

Bill Maher's film about religion is so bad it's actually very funny. Just not for the reasons Maher seems to want. Made in 2006, it's full of the kind of extremist-bating stuff that Louis Theroux got bored with 10 years ago. You know the drill: find some inarticulate and/or hardline people with extreme or rigid views on some doctrinal matter, then take the piss. The only difference here in terms of format is that whilst Louis took the time to actually live in his subjects' world and was careful to keep his incredulity as hidden as possible, so that we got at least a fuller portrait of them and their lives, Maher just turns up and insults people to their faces, talks over them with his own equally strident but better articulated (and crucially louder) opinions, with occasional mugs to the camera to demonstrate how loony these people are. Then the camera can film people getting angry or defensive or begin to stutter or stumble over their words. Thus God is a LIE, sheeple!

Maher is opposed to religion, in a sub-Dawkins -Hitchens -Humphrys kind of a way and makes no bones about this. Well, that's fine. I've been a lifelong atheist and have never felt the pull of God or religion to be an important force in my life, and I once felt angry about how stupid religion obviously was. Of course, I was 16 at the time*, and didn't use my years of experience as a stand-up comedian who works rooms for a living to bully people into looking stupid for a documentary.

So I don’t object to an atheist making a documentary about religion per se, it’s just one as poorly made and thought-out as this one. Part of the problem is the obviousness of his targets, and a big part of it is the sheer pointlessness of the format. Maher goes around the world** doing his look-at-the-loony shtick but despite most of the screen time being a series of ‘interviews’, in reality they are monologues. The interviewees are just there to hear The Amazing Wit of Bill Maher and either agree with him on the spot or look offended. Bill does not at any point seem to be under the impression that anyone he talks to has anything in particular to offer him, with the possible exception of his mother.

This approach leads to quite a lot of unintentional humour. There is a scene where he ‘interviews’ a Muslim woman about some of the more disturbing interpretations of Qur’anic verses (and I do mean interpretations – although Bill never mentions it, there are a variety of variant translations of the text, and the Qur’an is famously difficult to render in English, and guess what, Bill – these books are products of particular times and places and most believers are quite capable of understanding that), and when she tries to explain how she ‘reads the Qur’an’, Bill impatiently interrupts her: ‘That’s not how you read a Holy Book!’ he exclaims. The curious spectacle of an atheist telling a person of faith how they read their scriptures has a wonderful irony to it. It was a scene that returned to my mind at the end, when Bill tells us about the importance of being ‘humble’, which apparently only atheists are capable of.


Two other things stick out about this documentary as truly repellent, however. The first of these is Bill’s self-righteous and thoroughly underserved claiming of ‘reason’ for himself and fellow atheists alone, and the second is how his unacknowledged prejudices come to the fore when he talks about two issues in particular: Islam and Israel.

Bill is convinced that because he has spotted that religious texts can be contradictory or express unpleasant sentiments, and that the figure of Jesus has non-Christian historical antecedents (a truly astonishing insight that only someone engaged in the forefront of theological disputation could have unearthed – that or an AS Religious Studies student) therefore belief in God/religion (Maher frequently treats the two as identical) is fundamentally irrational and therefore wrong.

Of course, this childish level of analysis Has Teh Dumm. He repeatedly refuses to acknowledge a social, cultural, historical or political aspect of religious belief, as evidenced in his interviews regarding Israel and Islam, and evinces no ability to empathise with people whose cultural background is different from his own.***

Israel is a particularly fascinating example of his prejudices. He interviews an anti-Zionist rabbi, who begins to outline his theological justification for his stance, before the inevitable series of accusations and interruptions. The rabbi is pretty much accused of holocaust denial and wanting the destruction of all Israelis, and the hapless man is left looking somewhat bemused by the whole encounter when Bill does an O’Reilly, quitting the interview with a smirk on his face. So we never hear much about what the rabbi does think on the subject and the whole Ahmedinejad ‘Israel wiped from the face of the earth’ controversy is brought up, Maher doesn’t do anything to acknowledge the controversial way that the comment was twisted and reported in the media and uses it to discredit the rabbi. In fact he doesn’t investigate the political nature of the Israel/Palestine dispute at all, not mentioning the Naqba, the 1964 or 1967 wars, the Oslo Accords or the intifadas. A montage of angry Muslims and some bombing scenes are what we are offered. How insightful. No refugee camps, white phosphorous, ‘targeted killings’ or anything then, Bill? What about the UN GA resolutions condemning the occupation? No? Hmm.

This links directly to Maher’s characterisation of Islam. After his casual dismissal of anyone who opposes or criticises Israel as effectively in favour of suicide bombing, he decides to characterise Islam as a whole through a few of the high profile incidents of recent years – the Muhammad cartoons being a favourite, though he’s not above using 9/11 footage during the film’s epilogue. He says that when things start getting blown up, it’s usually Muslims behind it (which conveniently ignores the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions – presumably they’re hiding behind the huge elephant with ‘Israeli state terror’ written on it in fluorescent neon letters that’s already in the room) and actually goes so far as to say that his Muslim interviewees are only saying they’re peaceful because he’s an ‘outsider’ – that’s right, Bill’s implying that there’s some global Muslim club that is setting out deliberately to deceive people about their hidden agenda to take over the world, probably concealed in that funny ‘writing’ of theirs and that gibberish that so many of them speak. If they’ve got nothing to hide, why don’t they say everything in English, like the rest of us, eh? Tying everything back together, I particularly loved the bit when we see the Temple Mount, with subtitles helpfully informing us that ‘The Temple of Solomon is the holiest site in Judaism ... but Muslims built the Al-Aqsa mosque right on top of it’. Nice.

The end of the film has Maher standing in Megiddo, saying that unless we give up religion right this second we’ll all die in a nuclear holocaust. Because we’re not rational and unprejudiced like what he is.

In short then: thanks for flying the flag for atheists and reason there Bill, really appreciate it. You did everyone a service, really you did. Did you ever wonder exactly why those guys in the al-Aqsa mosque said they'd never found you funny?


-----------------------------------------------
*That's actually an exaggeration for comic effect. I used to get annoyed about it in a New Atheist way well into my early 20s. Eventually I grew up a bit though – my motto became encapsulated on a t-shirt you can get from Ben Goldacre’s Bad Science store: ‘I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that.’

**In that curiously American way where you go and see people around the world but never leave America in your head.

*** This got me thinking about exactly what Bill was missing out in his view on religion. Here is a rough list.
1. The idea that religious practice is part of your family life. By his own admission religion played only a limited part in his own childhood, but he seems not to be concerned enough to see how children incorporate their understandings about religion and practices – such as when to fast, when to pray, how divorce happens into their early experiences.
2. Social influences. If your religion is something practiced by family members, friends, authority figures, people you look up to, this will influence how you see your religion.
3. Political considerations. Religion, as Marx noted, is a reflection of and an expression of resistance to class society – it is a place where the unspoken or unspeakable desires of the oppressed and the solace and justification of the oppressors can find a voice. People look to their religion and their God for an expression of peace and justice that cannot be found in their own lives, as well as to express the right of the haves to their lot. The Church of England is a good example of this – at one level it is the state religion, represented in Parliament and led by the head of state, but internally split between a High and Low Church – one of the establishment and one of the People. Around the margins you have the denominations concerned with ecumenicalism and social justice – the Nonconformists, the Methodists, the Quakers, where so much progressive thinking and leadership has come from.
4. The ineffable. Whether Bill likes it or not, many people have an experience of something Other, alien to ourselves. This experience cannot be quantified, it seems to be entirely personal, and yet often intensely profound. This experience can be attributed to God, insofar as it can be named. If pressed, people often describe this as their conviction that ‘there is something greater than themselves’
The extent to which these factors and others I’m still ignorant of interact within an individual are entirely unpredictable. It certainly doesn’t make someone irrational because they are influenced by any of these.

So anyway, I was just wondering...

Let's not worry for a second about the ex-Nazi* whose office (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Holy Inquisition) was not exactly enthusiastic about pursuing allegations of child abuse but still lays claim to a billion followers complaining about the 'marginalisation' of Christianity. I was more thinking about his now legendary speech yesterday. Just after the Nazi reference. This bit.

As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a 'reductive vision of the person and his destiny'

Now I've already had a dig at his Nazi past, as has everyone else on the internet. Just thought it might be worth mentioning that Italy and Spain were both heavily RC nations in the 20th century, and, well you know what bastions of human freedom they became. So you don't need to look as far afield as ... well one doesn't want to appear indelicate, does one? As far afield as You-Know-Who to find a place for the Vatican at the fascist table. Phew, I think I managed to avoid Godwining this piece. Close call - that Ratzinger and Nazism, it's just going to dog him like a child-sex allegation at the Criminal Records Bureau, isn't it? Sorry about that.

Damn, I mentioned them! Three times!

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*Yes, I know it was the law when he joined the Hitler Youth and I know he was only a teenager, but in fairness, he started it.

380 BCE and All That

So, I was looking through Plato again for the first time in a very long while. And there's this bit in Meno where Socrates says:

As the soul is immortal, has been born often and has seen all things here and in the underworld, there is nothing which it has not learned; so it is in no way surprising that it can recollect the things it knew before, both about virtue and other things. As the whole of nature is akin, and the soul has learned everything, nothing prevents a man, after recalling one thing only - a process men call learning - discovering everything else for himself, if he is brave and does not tire of the search, for searching and learning are as a whole, recollection.

(Plato, Meno 81, c-d)

and this reminded me of something I used to know well as a teenager...



Of course, this is based on Umberto Eco's work, himself a philosopher critical of religious dogma. So is it a realistic depiction of Medieval attitudes to knowledge? Certainly some thought so, as late as 1542. In the preface to Copernicus' book On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres Osiander addresses the Pope:

as soon as certain people learn that in these books of mine which I written about the revolution of the spheres of the world I attribute certain motions of the terrestrial globe, they will immediately shout to have me and my opinion hooted off the stage.

(Copernicus, 1995:4)

New ideas, in religious circles, had their price. Copernicus' conflicted with literal readings of Scripture as well, which was a problem:

He set the earth on its foundations;
it can never be moved.

Psalm 104:5

Of course, Christian philosophy these days is more generally associated with Aristotle than Plato, but in this respect, the idea of received knowledge fits closely with the Platonic notion of Forms. In the Theory of Forms, knowledge of such things is iluminated by the Form of the Good - later identified with the one God of Abrahamic religions - and Forms are the real world, of which the physical objects around us are but pale shadows. In addition, Plato had developed a doctrine of an immortal (albeit reincarnated) soul. Much of this fits with Christian understandings of God.

The idea that Platonism is associated with Christianity is not of course new. St Justin, a 2nd century Palestinian Christian, 'was convinced that in the highminded Stoic ethics of human brotherhood, and especially in the other-worldly Platonic metaphysics, there was much for a Christian to welcome.' (Chadwick 1992:46) and certainly Dante (roughly contempraneous with the setting of Eco's novel) thought him worthy enough to live in the Noble Castle of the underworld, a place for virtuous people who had the misfortune to live before Christ to live out eternity in comfort.*

But why am I telling you all this? Well, mainly because I find the history of ideas interesting, and assume other people might too. Also, because it is an incident which shows the extent to which Christian theology was inspired by ideas that came before it. Finally, because it is a pleasingly exact reflection of the political order of the late medieval age, the very definition of reactionary thinking, a Tolkien-esque desire for a perfect history that makes up for the deficiencies of an imperfect present. It is the polar opposite of the left, and the way in which Eco and Annaud (the film's director) play with it wittily underscores the philosophy's deficiencies. The central deficiency being the unexamined assumption at the heart of the 'recapitulation' idea, that the ability to learn must be due to the knowledge being already present**. The search for a phenomenological explanation is not begun, let alone completed. As with Plato, so with Christianity. It is a poor piece of philosophy that starts from its conclusion, as a rule.

-----------------------------------------------
*

We came then to the foot of a great castle,
Encircled seven times by lofty walls,
And around which there flowed a pleasant stream;

...

I saw the master of knowledge, Aristotle,
Sitting there with a company of philosophers.

All looked to him, and they all did him honour;
I saw there Socrates, as well as Plato,
The two who stood out and were nearest to him
(Inferno, Canto IV:106-135)

** Melling, in his study of Plato, notes 'he is adding religious emphasis to doctrine seriously propounded, but unsupported ... by adequate argument to substantiate it' (Melling 1987: 62)


BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alighieri, D. 1998. The Divine Comedy OUP.
Chadwick, H. 1992. The Early Christian Community in The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, J. McManners (Ed.), OUP.
Copernicus, N. 1995. On The Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, Prometheus Books.
Eco, Umberto 1998. The Name of the Rose, Vintage.
Melling, D. 1987. Understanding Plato, OUP.
Plato, 1981. Five Dialogues. GMA Grube (trans.) Hackett.

Bwahahahahahahahaaaaaaa*

*Like an ordinary Hahahahahaaa, but evilerer. Cos it's Hallowe'en!

Anyways for anyone not a regular Sadlynaut, check out this batshit insane anti-Hallowe'en rant. Anti-genius strikes again.

Free sample:

The word "occult" means "secret." The danger of Halloween is not in the scary things we see but in the secret, wicked, cruel activities that go on behind the scenes. These activities include:

· Sex with demons
· Orgies between animals and humans
· Animal and human sacrifices
· Sacrificing babies to shed innocent blood
· Rape and molestation of adults, children and babies
· Revel nights
· Conjuring of demons and casting of spells
· Release of "time-released" curses against the innocent and the ignorant.

My Awesome Life, Vol 2

Rather than update properly, with actual writing and that, here's some recent-ish pics of My Awesome Life TM.
Mmm, Saltwell Park in Gateshead. It's won awards you know. For extreme parkiness. I likes it.

Did the walk from Whitley Bay to Tynemouth a little while back. It's ver' nice.
Actually saw the Millennium Bridge open! It's always nice to have the theory tested in practice, I suppose.

The Gay Pride march from last weekend.

The Ouseburn music festival. The band were called Beaks. You don't see enough cornet players in bird masks playing rock these days do you?
Just disturbing. I mean, I'm not religious myself, but this seems like convenience culture taken a step too far. Not to labour the obvious, but isn't praying something you do in your head? Who can't think up words in their head, but still feels the need to ask a deity for some form of assistance via the miracle of SMS? Is God like the Orange Wednesday 2-for-1 cinema ticket service? Text 'pray' and receive a plenary indulgence to go with your salvation?

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

I thought I'd do a review of a book I've been reading over the past couple of days, fitting neatly as it does with all my recent boning up on Christianity. Plus I'm a huge fan of Jose Saramago and would highly recommend The Cave and Death at Intervals to anyone who has yet to discover him.

Hopefully the fact that it's about Jesus can be overcome and what readers I may have will find it at least vaguely interesting. Usual caveats: I'm not a Christian and I have only recently started taking an interest in it as a religion. My familiarity with the texts is somewhat limited - if I miss something that's in Corinthians or Acts, it's because I haven't read them.

Also, as I've gone to the bother of checking out some genuine sources and stuff, I've gone to the poncy effort of doing references. Check me out!

So, what's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ all about then? Well, it's an novel purporting to be an account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, a man who Douglas Adams rather neatly summed up as being 'nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change.' You've probably heard of him.

As I said in previous posts, the real gospels aren't meant to be historically accurate documents. They do, after all, feature a central character who returns from the dead (not that this is unknown, but in my experience those who return from the dead have an insatiable hunger for braaaiins. Seriously, I've seen films about it and everything). They are, however, thematically vital. For all the inconsistencies, those documents have survived the evolution and argument within the early Church and become the bedrock of the religion. Their conceptual space is important. Jesus' message has broad universal themes and the parables often have clear, if uncomfortable messages - and certain parables are repeated across the canon, such as the prodigal son.

Saramago therefore seeks to illuminate the life of Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels. Key events are either replicated or woven into the new situations he creates. 'Father, why have you forsaken me' for example comes not on the cross but when a young Jesus sees his father crucified by the Romans.

This is important because the Gospels have certain major historical inconsistencies. As Chris Harman notes in A People's History of the World,

It claims his birth was in Bethlehem in the Roman province of Judaea, where his family had gone for a census during the time of Augustus. But there was no census at the time stated and Judaea was not a Roman province at the time. When a census was held in 7 AD it did not require anyone to leave their place of residence. Similarly, the New Testament locates Jesus's birth as in the time of King Herod, who died in 4 BC. Roman and Greek writers of he time make no mention of Jesus

(2008:87)

Nevertheless, Saramago has Jesus born in a cave in Bethlehem after an arduous journey for the Roman census. It reminds me in a way of something David Harvey has to say about Capital, that Marx is taking the suppositions of classical economists as true in order to show that by their own lights they fail to produce the outcome they expect (Reading Marx's Capital Lecture 1).

And Saramago's Gospel is definitely heretical and blasphemous. Jesus has a prolonged, though monogamous, physical relationship with former prostitute Mary Magdalene, he spends much of the novel unaware of his divine status, and even equivocates nicely on the Trinity: 'you won't be dead in the absolute sense of the word, for as my son you'll be with Me, or in Me, I still haven't finally decided' says God at one point (2008:283). Jesus' brother James also gets short shrift, coming off as a petulant adolescent who wants nothing to do with his grandiose elder sibling. In contrast, James is generally held to have 'emerged as generally acknowledged head of the comunity at Jerusalem. Side by side with him were the 'apostles'' (Chadwick 1992:22)

The most interesting relationship in the book is probably the triumvirate of God, Jesus and the Devil. Jesus spends considerable time with both, and the Devil is a far more likeable presence than God.

I simply took what God didn't want, the flesh with all it's joys and sorrows, youth and senility, bloom and decay, but it isn't true that fear is one of my weapons, I don't recall having invented sin and punishment or the terror they inspire

(Saramago 2008:295)

he says, whilst in contrast God is made to spend over four pages detailing the gruesome deaths of various Christian martyrs, and comes across as every inch the God of the Old Testament: vain, patriarchal, arrogant and full of bloodlust.

Sympathy for the devil is an old theme of course, and criticism of God's character runs from Bertrand Russell to Terry Pratchett. Saramago's novel stands out in my eyes through bringing his usual sense of civility even to his outrage. Jesus, in particular, comes out fairly unblemished, relieved of responsibility for many of his more dubious teachings, a sensitive, intelligent man doomed by powers far beyond his or anyone else's ability to be saved from, a neat inversion of the traditional role of Jesus, that he is seen not as a deliverer from sin but a bringer of division and death.

Additionally, Saramago is very aware of just how Jewish Christianity is. Jesus inhabits an intensely religious Jewish land, and God himself is frequently concerned with his legacy as God of the Jews as much as his hope to change how he is seen (and hence who he is?) with his new idea of the Messiah.

Finally, he intelligently explores the big themes of justice, salvation, poverty, destiny, patriarchy, the nature of evil, the role of women and even love that fill the Gospels so. He has brought out a fantastic interpretation of the life of Jesus, and created from a story that has such mixed moral messages a firmly ethical interpretation of the story, in which God and justice are firmly separate and frequently opposing things. This is the greatest triumph of the book, that he has taken the life story of one who is supposedly one of the great moral teachers of all time, and shown that even if you grant him his story, a plausible interpretation is quite the reverse of what it is commonly assumed to be. Take Saramago's version of the Sermon on the Mount (warning - Saramago doesn't use speech marks to indicate when someone is talking so you have to work it out from the commas):

Blessed be you poor, Jesus told them, for yours is the kingdom of heaven ... but just then God became aware of what was happening and although too late to retract what Jesus had said, he forced him to speak other words which turned those tears of happiness into grim foreboding of the black future ahead, Blessed are you when men shall hate you

(ibid.: 309)

thus forcing the divisive elements of Jesus's philosophy squarely onto God's shoulders, leaving Jesus himself a far more enlightened figure than the Deity.

In conclusion then, if you'd like to see a coherent and humanitarian take on the life of Jesus Christ, one which captures many of the key ideas and underlying ethical implications of the New Testament, you could do far worse than pick up this book.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING
Fraser, Giles (ed.) 2007. The Gospels (Revolutions Series). Verso.
Gaiman, Neil and Pratchett, Terry 1991. Good Omens. Corgi.
Moorcock, Michael 1999. Behold the Man. Gollancz.
Nietzsche, Friedrich 2000. The Antichrist Prometheus
Nietzsche, Friedrich 1998. Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future Dover Thrift.
Plato, 380 BCE. Euthyphro Internet Classics Archive.
Pratchett, Terry 1993. Small Gods Corgi.
Russell, Bertrand 2004.Why I am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. Routledge.

REFERENCES
Chadwick, Henry 1992. The Early Christian Community in The Oxford Illustrated History of Christianity, McManners J (Ed.) OUP 1992.
Harman, Chris 2008. A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium. Verso.
Harvey, David Reading Marx's Capital - Class 1, Introduction, available at http://davidharvey.org/2008/06/marxs-capital-class-01/
Saramago, Jose 2008. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. Vintage.

John the Baptist

I've been making my way through the Gospels for some time now, and I've finally finished them (it was for work, in case you were wondering).

I'd like to make it clear, I'm definitely not a Biblical scholar. Any comments I make here are purely a reaction to the text, and an attempt to comment on what is by any standards an extremely complex piece of literature (as a short illustration: there is not one Jesus in the Gospels but four, each markedly different from the others in temperament and action).

As a lifelong atheist, I'd never seen the point in reading the Bible before, especially since the copy I was given for my Christening was KJV, which is virtually impossible to read without slipping into a coma. However the NRSV translation is very good and readable, and the introduction by Terry Eagleton is very spiffing.

What interests me, naturally, are the political aspects of the text. Of course religions are inherently political, and founding documents incredibly so; and equally obviously Jesus was a politically significant figure in the Gospels: for a start, crucifixion was a punishment only the Romans were allowed to mete out, a secular sentence of tortureporn-and-death by the occupying military authority. Jesus' symbol is inherently political. What particularly interested me though was a different character entirely: John the Baptist.

First, some background. The Gospels were written between approximately 60 and 100 AD, several decades after the events which are supposed to take place in them, and the 'authors' (assuming there was only one for each book, which is debatable) were writing at a time when Christians were just one more Jewish splinter sect trying to establish itself and attract supporters (Christians as a label is also a fairly late development - it comes from the Greek word Christos, meaning saviour). Each Gospel is written for particular audiences. Luke is very keen to stress the miracles aspect, all evangelical, definitely aimed at the gentiles. Matthew, by contrast, is keen to push the Jewish angle ('Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish but to fulfill.' 5:17).

John is a fascinating character. He turns up in all four gospels (although, natch, occupying different thematic roles each time), and he seems to be of both thematic and political importance. Some stress his miraculous birth, others his baptismal activities. But they seem to agree that Jesus has himself baptised by John. This may be part of 'paving the way', of which more later, but politically seems to be a clear act of submission or at least of acknowledgement of the importance of the John cult.

The other part of John's role, paving the way, is much more theological. It is important to remember that it is central to the writers' case that Jesus MUST have returned from the dead, because otherwise he has failed to fulfil the Old Testament prophecies that would qualify him as the Messiah. John's presence is much the same: Matthew lifts his raison d'etre straight from Isiah 40:3

1In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Desert of Judea 2and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near." 3This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:
"A voice of one calling in the desert,
'Prepare the way for the Lord,
make straight paths for him.' "

By having someone to pave the way, Jesus' appearance is strictly in line with Jewish expectations. As Terry Eagleton notes:

Not much of what Jesus does or says in these writings is original. For the most part, he does and says things we know to be fairly typical of first-century Jewish prophets.

Nevertheless, it seems clear that there are at least two Messiah cults here, that of Jesus and that of John. Jesus' cult is keen to portray John as one who believes he is 'paving the way' for Jesus to come later, so he can surrender his role and anoint Jesus as the real Messiah. From my personal, perhaps not terribly well-informed, perspective, the theological angle reads like classic 'face-saving' politics. It's the public line you take when realpolitik dictates your actions. There is a reason you can give for this from the Law, but you can't disguise that it's a written olive branch.

I have no idea the extent to which John is a genuine historical figure, but the subtexts within the Gospels themselves are fascinating, and I think they easily support a reading of a very politically savvy cult – which probably goes some way to explaining its later success.

Sweet Christ Have You Seen Newsnight Review?

The recession through literature:
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged (swivel-eyed hate literature for the more mentalist sections of the ruling class)
Vince Cable's Booky Wook (pointless and point-missing 'neutral' analysis of a crisis that makes us all partisans).

What the fuck? Is this really the best choice that Newsnight wants to present us with?

Here's a few alternatives:

The Great Crash, 1929 - JK Galbraith

The Shock Doctrine - Naomi Klein

The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx - Alex Callinicos

The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists - Robert Tressell

The Communist Manifesto - Marx and Engels

Armed Madhouse - Greg Palast

The Fountain at the Centre of the World - Robert Newman

A People's History of the World - Chris Harman

Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond

And if you must indulge in swivel-eyed cult leaders with a Messiah complex, try this one...
Matthew 19:16-28
Mark 6:24

Maybe someone reads this and would like to put a few recommendations of their own? What would you recommend to help get a grip on this blasted crisis?

Would You Adam and Eve It

Continuing my short series of reflections on religious stories caused by sudden exposure to them.

I've had to teach the Adam and Eve story recently. This has meant trying to look at the story from a palatable angle, whilst still making it comprehensible to the younglings.

The result of my musings was thus:

Of course, that means leaving God out of it, which does undermine the idea somewhat (since the loss of innocence first stems from disobedience to Him) but the basic idea seems sound. From a folk point of view you are seeking to resolve two unavoidable facts: you know what good behaviour should be, but you do not always adhere to it. How to explain this apparent contradiction? This way: the tree of knowledge produces fruit (i.e. your own moral awareness) but there is a selfishness, a desire, that counters one's own best instincts. Now, the knowledge of good and evil must be closely related, and it is not immediately clear that one must be prior to the other: the knowledge of good and evil must be present for temptation to be meaningful, but if temptation is tempting one away from that which is good, it implies that temptation must also be a post-good artefact, like the knowledge of the difference.

Interestingly, the addition of a God to the mix is not required here. But if you assume that the myth was devised in a mythologically/theologically predisposed society it does not seem unreasonable to demand a place for a deity i n this scheme. Of course, this is not a historical argument but an ideological one. The structure and content of the story is the key issue here and so it does not matter particularly if this was a myth created by a monotheistic society of an adaptation/translation of earlier myths. Once a supernatural being of any kind is proposed, by it's nature it supercedes the natural order expressed in the physicalities of trees, serpents, apples and talking ribs. The interesting features of the Biblical creator-God are that it is (a) uniquely powerful and (b) benevolent. So if you take the benevolence of the instigator of conscience and temptation as given, it is beyond self-evident that the prior state of conscience and temptation is benevolent. Hence the doctrine of original sin.

But it is equally clear that the main thrust of the argument is not disobedience to God. This is an effect of the introduction of the benevolent creator-God hypothesis. The real key of the story is to highlight a co-relation between conscience and temptation. The existence of good and evil is in fact a given, and the real issue is to explain how, if we know that there are good things and bad we still choose the bad.

Now of course to modern eyes what is absolutely fascinating about this story is its absoluteness. There is no room for context - and I don't just mean that there is no sociological account of the construction of morality. Rather what I mean is that there is a cast-iron assumption that we do, or at least should, know right from wrong; that one cannot be prevented from carrying out an immoral act, and that evil comes from temptation, since temptation would indicate any form of desire, regardless of how apparently harmless or even noble, judging from Genesis 3:4-6:

4. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5. For God doeth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
6. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.

It's practically Buddhist. Still, the moral of the story that seems to be both the most unavoidable and generally useful is this: conscience and temptation are closely related, even entangled, and alongside conscience, evil is an inevitable feature of human nature.

Or, as Solzhenitsyn once put it...

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

Hopefully This Won't Be Relevant Much Longer...

In the wake of Obama's ascension yesterday, anyway.

I was browsing through a book on Catholicism, as you do, and was struck by this description of one of the Spanish Inquisition's many interesting habits:

'Prisoners' hands would be tied behind their backs and their bodies then hoisted off the ground. They would be left suspended for hours or days until they were ready to 'confess' their sins. In another [torture method], the accused would be strapped to a trestle table, with their feet higher than their heads, while the priestly inquisitors would pour water down their throats.'

Go and see Moazzam Begg speak next week, I urge you.