Chaucer

Focusing on the human reality of a Jesus or a Socrates before their executions is worthwhile, because a few of us in this American experiment were naive enough to believe for many years that -- although nasty things were done by our government in our name in Vietnam and elsewhere -- this culture would never be brazen enough to support our worst abuses of power in broad daylight. We thought that, in public, the democratic Western consensus in the U.S. and elsewhere would still hold, keeping abuses like the tiger cages in South Vietnam or the massacre in Mylai as things not to be proud of, rather than cause for thumping our chest. Oh, they'd happen. But above all, there was lip service paid to the idea -- however hypocritical -- that even our worst enemies were still human, and that therefore we shouldn't be proud of occasionally stooping to their level in moments of extreme frustration. How they might act would surely have no bearing on how we might act. Surely. Surely............ Surely............................................ .........

Government secrecy might be wildly out of control down to our present day, but things kept secret would be things that our culture would never stand for in public. Right? Right?............... Right?......................................

Well, wrong. The growing consensus for humane-ity in international law, codes like the Geneva Conventions, the U.N. Charter, and the U.S. Constitution, were supposed to confine such appalling lapses to moments of irresponsible frustration, not to cool policy. But it was cool policy that gave us waterboarding and all the other appalling abuses that came from pure policy in this century. I'm not naive enough to think it wasn't pure policy on our part before, on occasion. But it was not perpetrated in broad daylight because our democratic Western culture wouldn't stand for it in public. It was perpetrated in secret. But Bush Jr. didn't veto the application of the Army codebook rules to Guantanamo interrogations in secret. He did that in broad daylight -- and our culture yawned.

The future of humanity is at stake. When the most powerful country in the world becomes an outlaw in public -- and eventually boasts about the "enhanced interrogation" in public, as Bush and Cheney eventually did, to the overt and unashamed cheers of their supporters -- and when those publicly avowed -- and boasted yet!!!!!!!!!!! -- breaches of law are celebrated in public, one knows that lip service to the century-old notion of the same law for all as a goal, if not a reality, has been shat on for good. The Geneva Conventions has been shat on for good. The U.N. charter and the U.S. Constitution have been shat on for good.

Anything is possible, because shame is dead.

Two thousand years ago, a preacher said that we should love our enemies. There have been plenty of studies showing that 99.9% of the Jesus sayings were sophisticated developments of dicta already found in ancient Jewish culture -- except "Love our enemies". "Love our enemies" is the one thing for which no scholar has ever found a precedent. And the practical application of that was the development of law in our own time governing our treatment of war prisoners, governing our treatment of civilians, etc. Did we follow these laws? Not all the time, no. Did governments fear them? Democracies usually did. They do so no more.

And there was nothing like that kind of legal safety net around combat until the secular compact of modern Western democracy. That secular compact of modern Western democracy is now crumbling in the cells of Guantanamo. And you and I and the whole world are threatened directly by that. And unless we renew our efforts to recover the true heritage of all the humanitarian thinkers of our entire history, those like Jesus and Buddha and Socrates, freeing them from the mystificating mumbo-jumbo of institutionalized religion and sectarian butchery and strife, you can bid your grandchildren's adulthood goodbye. There will be no world left for them to live in.

I am an unashamed humanist. There is one thing that is still sacred to me, and it's not religion. It's the history of the countless tries by big-hearted humans to expand human consciousness of one's neighbor, of the poor, of the widow, of the orphan, of the left-out -- of the enemy.

Do you think it was so fucking easy for these ideas to gain traction, just because they happened to be already given lip-service years before you were born? Don't make me laugh. Nothing is forever. Any idea that stands in the way of raw power and raw selfishness is no stronger than the respect given it in the moment -- and in law. Nothing is broken more easily than a compact that holds the powerful to account.

And that's what thinkers like Jesus tried to do. They tried to hold the powerful to account. No wonder the greasy, greedy power-grubbers of religious quackery tried to co-opt the Buddhas and the Jesuses for themselves. They knew they had to muffle the ethical power of such thinkers in order to line their own nest and keep themselves cozy with the powerful.

Law may be often abused by the powerful. I'm not naive enough to think it isn't. But law is intended to hold the powerful to account. It may often do a lousy job of that because the powerful are -- duh -- powerful. But that's no reason to let it all go hang just because criminals like Bush and Cheney are walking the streets scot free. Times like these are exactly the times when decent people renew the strength tenfold of the most humane ideas that humanity has ever generated. We know we're facing an ethical abyss. We know that not even lip service is paid any more to "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind". All the more reason to delve into humanity's very, very few shining moments when one decent thinker here or there dared to speak out and say "Did you visit those in prison?", or dared to stand in front of a tank, or dared to have a dream, or dared to renounce all violence, or dared us not to live unexamined lives.

I know very well the guffaws this post will cause. But a complacency at the notion that the real Jesus -- the Jesus that religion has stifled, has boxed in with its cheap conjuring tricks, has drowned in its sea of ludicrous stunts, has subverted -- can have no practical value to the historian who loves humanity, and who understands how precious the human heritage really is, becomes insufferable and is ultimately as destructive of the human spirit as religion ever was.

Chaucer

gurugeorge

So IOW you, like most other HJ-ers, are picking out the parts of the story that please you and ignoring the rest.

But that shouldn't be surprising - if the myth was designed to appeal to a broad church.

It really is a good story.

bacht

Do we know what the "real" Jesus said and did? What about the harsh judgments against "the Jews" in Matthew and John?

As guru george says, we know how often people have projected their own beliefs onto this cipher-man. If nothing else Jesus may be the best ever Rorschach (inkblot) test.

maryhelena

Heaven help me! This is supposed to be a discussion on the non-christian sources - sources that are held up as being able to establish the historicity of a Jesus crucified under Pilate, a Jesus who had followers who believed he was able to rise from the dead and walk among them on this earth - and I now get this - an appeal to the gospel story of JC ..........................

Is this now an admission of defeat - that you are unable to use the non-christian sources to establish the historicity of Jesus? Pilate could have crucified many men by the name of Jesus - the beliefs of the followers of one of these Jesus figures is not sufficient to identify, historically, which Jesus Pilate supposedly crucified. Jesus needs his own identity - and you don’t have one for him in the non-christian sources. End of story.

Chaucer, your humanitarian interests are commendable. Unfortunately, your on the wrong track if you think you can find a humanitarian code, in the sense of humans living together in a peaceful environment, in the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is not a moral code - it is an amoral code. It is a code of intellectual life not social life.

Below are some points taken from a recent post of mine to the blog of Joseph Hoffmann. The subject is forgiveness - but substitute ‘love your enemies’ and the context remains relevant.

.......any man, or woman, who takes up the sermon on the mount as a philosophy or moral code for living a rational life within a social context – is neither a philosopher, witty or gentle – and I’d not give him the time of day, let alone sit down with such a man for a glass of wine – but maybe that’s just it – too much wine and his head is just so full of bull……

OK, lets start with Matthew 6:14: “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you” – and so on – and if you don’t forgive others then the heavenly Father will not forgive you.

Apart from the fact that any rational atheist should have their crap detector on high alert when admonition such as this is coming from high above in outer space – the admonition itself needs to be subject to the reality of living a real life in the here and now.

Forgiveness – well, I’ll lay my cards on the table – for me, it’s a case of it being rather like a red flag to a bull….

My own crap detector went on red alter just over 10 years ago. I was sitting comfortably in front of the TV – and on comes Oprah and Dr Phil. The young woman as their guest had a problem – some years previously her father had been murdered – and the man responsible was still in jail. Her problem – she could not bring herself to forgive him. So, Dr Phil to the rescue. Up comes the murdered man’s picture on the big screen – and Dr Phil does his pop psychology bit – and then the young woman stands in front of the picture of the man who murdered her father – and with tears running down her face – forgave him…

Rather than throw a shoe at the TV – I sent off emails to both Oprah and Dr Phil – no reply. Bottom line here, of course, is that theology has infiltrated psychology. However, there are concerned people out there:

Before Forgiving: Cautionary Views of Forgiveness In Psychotherapy.(edited by Sharon Lamb and Jeffrie G. Murphy). (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Getting Even: Forgiveness And Its Limits (Jeffrie G Murphy (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Forgiveness And The Healing Process: A Central Therapeutic Concern.(edited by Cynthia Ransley and Terri Spy). (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Murphy and Lamb are based in the US. Murphy is a philosopher and Lamb a psychologist.

Ransley and Spy are based in the UK – both are psychologists. (one a Christian, the other an agnostic).

The Christians do have an escape hatch for their literal, social contract, reading of forgiveness – sinning against the Holy Ghost merits a pass on forgiving….

........if wise men, and women, today, in this 21th century, are advocating caution re the whole forgiveness idea as a psychological necessity for human wellbeing – then, lets not go ascribing such a questionable teaching to any lst century wise man……Come on now – the historical context from within which the NT springs – a historical conflict between Jewish nationalism and Roman imperialism – forgiveness would be tantamount to treason. So – it’s not a moral code that is being advocated in the sermon on the mount – it’s an intellectual, amoral code, where ‘forgiveness’ of old ideas is a rational action in order to move on to the next idea….”Father forgive them for they know not what they do”. When you know better you do better – the old ideas had their rightful place but eventually they become tired and lack the necessary energy to move forward – so you ‘forgive’ them for their mistakes, their inadequacies, and embrace the new….(which of course, as with all ideas, are always indebted to the old…..)

Fay Weldon: Female Friends. (or via: amazon.co.uk)

“Understand and forgive, my mother said, and the effort has quite exhausted me. I could do with some anger to energize me, and bring me back to life again. But where can I find that anger? Who is to help me? My friends? I have been understanding and forgiving my friends, my female friends, for as long as I can remember……Understand and forgive……Understand husbands, wives, fathers, mothers…….Grit your teeth, endure. Understand, forgive, accept, in the light of your own death, your own inevitable corruption.”

“Oh mother, what have you taught me? And what a miserable, crawling, snivelling way to go, the worn-out slippers placed neatly beneath the bed, careful not to give offense.”

--------------------

Chaucer, no, we should not love our enemies. To love is to value something, to esteem it highly. If your enemy wants to kill you there is nothing within his action to love, to value. Yes, of course, we must treat all men, regardless of their crime, humanely - to fail to do that is to denigrate our own humanity. However, one does not love another person who wants to act in an immoral way towards oneself. Their action is devoid of value - and as such, love is an inappropriate response. To love ones enemies is to devalue the very idea of love - it makes it meaningless, a prostitute available for all comers.....

The only context in which love your enemies has any value is within an intellectual context. Your enemy is that new idea that you can’t stand, it’s out to overturn everything you ever valued, everything you ever stood for - but that enemy idea is relentless and wins the day on an intellectual battlefield - so, embrace the enemy, love the enemy, for by doing so intellectual evolution can made progress and bring benefits, values, with it.

Seriously, though, there cannot be any forward movement towards humanism while that figure on the cross is believed to be the very epitome of what it means to be human – the seat and the wellspring of Christian morality. This final roadblock to a humanist world needs to be bulldozed to the only place where it can have any rational expression – as a symbol of intellectual evolution. Mind and Matter – the two elements of our humanity – function according to two very different codes – one moral and the other amoral.

Chaucer

Even the shorter and earlier Agapios version of the Josephus TF, with none of that "He is the Messiah" or "if one calls him a man" or "surprising feats" stuff, still calls him a "wise man" and "virtuous" -- which Jos. never hesitates to say of a few others who also fall afoul of the state, BTW, so this is pretty normal for him. The notion then that Jesus was a humanitarian of some kind is already there in the Roman canon.

Essentially, I reverse Vivisector's equation: he wrote of the pagan sources being confirmatory. But I make them primary, not confirmatory. The Biblical sources are merely confirmatory, but even so, they are only confirmatory where/when they corroborate or flesh out details behind attributes already in the pagan record. Now, no one else in the whole written corpus of human literature is given ownership of "Love your enemies" before the Jesus documents. And since it appears to be one of the very few things that are original to the Jesus documents, and since it fits with the picture given in the earlier shorter non-supernatural version of the pagan TF, it makes more sense than not to view "Love your enemies" as more likely than not the remark of someone duly described in the earliest source for a pagan text as "wise"/"virtuous". Note that I merely view it as more likely than not an authentic remark from Jesus the human preacher of the Agapios TF; and I know that likelihood is not the same as certainty.

It is both. Any set of remarks from a humanitarian can assume various functions that the original speaker/writer may never have intended. Jefferson, a slave-holder, probably never intended his words "All men are created equal" to become a rallying cry for the abolitionist movement!!! Yet when we examine that movement prior to the Civil War, Jefferson's remark has become precisely that. In the same way, the Sermon on the Mount became centuries later a rallying cry for decent care of the poor, for due consideration of all who are vulnerable, including for women, which gave birth to chivalry, for due respect for civilians in time of war, and for rules of treatment for one's enemies once they're vanquished.

Sure, these evolved guidelines may have as often been breached as followed. But in being generated in the first place, humanity was in no position to put that genii back in the bottle. The notion of a basic human dignity for all, once mooted, could not be removed from the human equation. It became a part of the human experience, and sure, one might choose to trash it, but there were (sometimes) consequences for trashing it. None of this would have been possible without the implicit reproaches in that sermon, whatever that sermon's original intent.

Chaucer

gurugeorge

Nah, they're only "confirmatory" when they cohere with your preconcieved notion of a proto-Commie Jesus - which appears nowhere in the pagan sources, but is peppered here and there throughout the gospels.

But if you really want that, you need look no further than the Cynic root of the teachings that have that aspect. They were the real proto-Commies. They said it all, long before "Jesus". They're the real early wise men you're looking for who think similarly to the way you do (them and the Mohists and millenarian Daoists in China).

Meanwhile, we're still waiting for something original that might have come out of this supposed real human being's mouth, something that can't be found elsewhere, in other philosophies, other myths, etc., etc.

Chaucer

O.K., show me where these earlier thinkers thought up "Love your enemies". And while you're at it, don't put words into my mouth: I view remarks like "love your enemies" as more likely Jesus's than not because of descriptions like "wise" and "virtuous" in the earliest shortest least embellished version of a pagan description of Jesus well outside the Bible, not because of any similarities to some Norman Thomas speech in 1948.

Chaucer

Toto

Pagans and Jews would probably not have considered loving your enemies as either wise or virtuous.

You are just using the so-called pagan sources (based on the TF, which was probably written by a Christian in any case) to bootstrap yourself into the gospels.

As a matter of historical sources, it just doesn't work.

maryhelena

To equate "wise" and "virtuous" with "love your enemies" is an abomination of any morality that seeks to uphold rationality. Chaucer, this is a travesty of a humanist approach to living a life with dignity and worth. I've no time for such a nonsense idea.

Chaucer

"Wise" and "virtuous" suggests that Jesus may have had a striking and an original philosophy of some kind, and sure enough, we find one when we drill down to less primary sources. Now, you may deem "Love your enemies" as an abomination of morality. Even I might do the same, just for the sake of argument. -- In fact, I'd probably choose instead the alleviation of unnecessary suffering as the highest virtue.

But that's not the right question here. The right question is whether or not any contemporaries may have viewed it as in some way virtuous, not whether or not we do. And I think the answer to that is not so easy. They may have, they may have not, however some of us may feel today.

Chaucer