Freethought & Rationalism Archive

mountainman · 10-20-2009, 08:03 PM

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Originally Posted by Toto

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Did they fill themselves with righteous indignation and beat up on innocent old ladies?

God drowned putatively innocent children and old ladies, turned one into a pillar of salt. . .

This is LXX and not NT material.
We are dealing with this thing called the NT.

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Jesus threatened them with hellfire. . .

Still not satire.

Did Jesus threaten old ladies with hellfire in the NT?

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Was in fact this history composed by Eusebius of Cæsarea as the introductory section clearly states?

I don't know and I don't see the relevance.

Perception of satire requires perception of relevance. Eusebius is the father of the orthox NT canon. With respect to these NT apocryphal books he was the Chief Heresiologist. He stated the authors of these books were vile heretics. It would appear to me that the vile heretic who authored this book mentioned Eusebius as the author in order to satire Eusebius.

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Data from the Translator

These Acts, which are obviously translated from the Greek, being of comparatively late date, and to all appearance destitute of any historical basis, are chiefly valuable from the linguistic point of view. The fact of Eusebius of Cæsarea being named as the author (p. 3), combined with the mention of "Urhāi of the Parthians" at p. 54, suffices, I think, to show that the work was written after the story of the conversion of Abgar, king of Edessa, by Addai, had become generally known, that is to say, after the publication of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, or about the middle of the fourth century. The Greek original, however, is, so far as I am aware, unpublished, if indeed it be still extant.

Toto · 10-21-2009, 12:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by Toto

God drowned putatively innocent children and old ladies, turned one into a pillar of salt. . .

This is LXX and not NT material.
We are dealing with this thing called the NT.

Did Jesus threaten old ladies with hellfire in the NT?

You betcha. Old ladies are capable of sinning, and Jesus threatened unsaved sinners with hellfire.

arnoldo · 10-21-2009, 06:01 AM

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Originally Posted by mountainman

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Originally Posted by arnoldo

He lost his cool because of the idolatry in Ephesus

OMG! That's it! Cultural wrath! That explains Saint John's indignant and anti-Hellenistic wrath precisely. Saints are not recognised for their anger. The author, who is stated as being Eusebius of Caesarea, is taking the mickey out of the young Saint John.

Is this POV a satire of someone who finds evidence that Christianity was invented in the third century via eisexegesis?

mountainman · 10-21-2009, 03:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

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Originally Posted by mountainman

This is LXX and not NT material.
We are dealing with this thing called the NT.

Did Jesus threaten old ladies with hellfire in the NT?

You betcha. Old ladies are capable of sinning, and Jesus threatened unsaved sinners with hellfire.

Yes, we are all aware of the general threats against humanity, but in this instance we seek specific threats against old ladies. I dont recall any textual snippets in the NT specifically describing Jesus accosting an old lady.

mountainman · 10-21-2009, 03:14 PM

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Originally Posted by arnoldo

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Originally Posted by mountainman

OMG! That's it! Cultural wrath! That explains Saint John's indignant and anti-Hellenistic wrath precisely. Saints are not recognised for their anger. The author, who is stated as being Eusebius of Caesarea, is taking the mickey out of the young Saint John.

Is this POV a satire of someone who finds evidence that Christianity was invented in the third century via eisexegesis?

According to the translator's preface the text was authored in the middle fourth century. What was happenning in the middle of the fourth century? Well, according to one reliable source .... "the highways were covered with galloping bishops". Julian uses satire against Constantine and Jesus at this time, and we might meditate on the notion that Julian's position on the matter of christianity was not unique. Julian after all, was brought up and educated by Arians. That is, followers of Arius.

arnoldo · 10-21-2009, 06:02 PM

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Originally Posted by Toto

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Originally Posted by arnoldo

You'll have to read 1984 to find that answer.

In other words, you just made something up to associate freethinking and Orwell.

Note the following definition;

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free - Only exist in the sense of "The dog is free of lice". The concept of political freedom has been replaced by the word crimethink.
http://www.newspeakdictionary.com/ns-dict.html

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Originally Posted by Toto

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Revisionist history is also a prevalent theme in 1984.

That's because Orwell had Stalin in mind, and Stalin, as we know, started off training for the priesthood, where he learned a lot.

Apparently not, since he became an atheist.

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Originally Posted by Toto

There's no sense just shouting "Orwell" and sticking your fingers in your ears.

If you have any evidence of drugs being used in early Christianity then please provide it. Otherwise this claim is merely a poor attempt at revisionist history.

Toto · 10-21-2009, 06:09 PM

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Originally Posted by arnoldo

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Originally Posted by Toto

In other words, you just made something up to associate freethinking and Orwell.

Note the following definition

You've still got nothing.

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Orwell had Stalin in mind, and Stalin, as we know, started off training for the priesthood, where he learned a lot.

Apparently not, since he became an atheist.

Think about it.

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Originally Posted by Toto

There's no sense just shouting "Orwell" and sticking your fingers in your ears.

If you have any evidence of drugs being used in early Christianity then please provide it. Otherwise this claim is merely a poor attempt at revisionist history.

The evidence is proffered in an article written by a respectable published historian, mentioned in the OP. It is admittedly speculative, but many claims of the history of the first century are necessarily speculative. That's what the discussion is about.

And the last time I checked, most of what historians do is revisionist in some sense - finding new evidence and interpretations, constructing new theories that overturn the old paradigm.

You can put your fingers back in your ears now.

David B · 10-21-2009, 06:53 PM

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Originally Posted by Toto

Historian Mary K. Matossian has an article in the Aug-Sept 2009 issue of Free Inquiry (the article is not online, unfortunately, but can be ordered at a reasonable cost or found in a library.)

Matossian is the author of Poisons of the Past: Molds, Epidemics, and History (or via: amazon.co.uk), which "presents evidence that food poisoning from microfungi in rye bread may have caused widespread hallucinations, low fertility and witch-like behavior during the 14th through the 18th centuries."

She has also traced the "quaking" of Quakers to ergotism in "Why the Quakers Quaked: The Influence of Climatic Change on Quaker Health, 1647--1659" in Quaker History, 96.1 (2007).

Her theory is that wet climate conditions allow the development of mold in certain plants. The side effects of this mold include visions, hallucinations, shaking, and seeing bright lights. Ergot is chemically similar to LSD, which has been studied in laboratory and other conditions.

The Free Inquiry article is highly speculative, but it is speculation based on science.

Matossian starts by discussion the symbolism of light. Before the 6th century BCE, there was sun worship in Egypt and elsewhere, but no general identification of light with goodness (or dark with evil.) The symbolic use of light for goodness starts with Zarathustra, who drank the sacred haoma of the ancient Persians, which scholars believe was hallucinogenic, and which led to visions of figures clothed in shining white. George Fox, who founded the Quakers, reports similar visions of figures in shining white.

Matossian then goes on to discuss the apocalyptic thinking of the Jews between the 3rd century BCE and the 2nd century CE. She points out that the Roman empire had created peace and prosperity, with no particular political or social crisis to spur apocalyptic thinking.

She then searches for the missing hallucinogen that might be connected with this apocalyptic thinking, since it has been generally felt that the climate was too dry to encourage mold, and in any case rye was not grown in the middle east at this time. The available drugs (beer, wine, opium, hashish) are not hallucingenic.

Albert Hoffman in 1978 had proposed that hallucinogenic alkaloids might have been produced when the fungus Claviceps paspali colonized wild grass.

Matossian points out that apocalyptic thinking began at the beginning of a moist climactic period and died out in the third century as the climate dried out; in addition, Galilee has a higher rainfall than the rest of Palestine.

She connects the story of the shepherds in Luke who saw the Angel of the Lord at night with drug induced hallucination, which would explain the brilliant light and the feeling of fear shared by the entire group. It is possible that these shepherds had consumed fresh milk from their flocks, who had eaten contaminated wild grasses. The ergot passes through the milk.

Another possibility for hallucinations were cultural borrowing from local Persians (the magi in Matt - magi were reported to have used a drug to call up the gods) or from the Greeks, since the priestesses of Demeter appear to have used something.

Matossian thinks that there would not have been enough hallucinogenic matierial to keep a religion going, but that the early mystery religions and Christians used a potentiator to increase the strength. This potentiator could have been wild rue, which contains beta carboline, which is also used as a potentiator in the modern day drug ayahuasca, which is consumed in a religious ritual.

Wild rue [peganon] is mentioned in Luke 11:43 where Jesus says "woe unto you Pharisees! for you tithe mint and rue and herbs of all kinds, and neglect justice and the love of God; it is those you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others."

Matossian notes that Biblical scholars consider peganon to be common rue, but this is quesitonable. Wild rue, unlike common rue, causes mild nausea, and mint is paired with it as a remedy.

This thesis explains some puzzles in early Christianity. It appears that the source of Paul's gospel and the early gospels was revelation from the Holy Spirit or Jesus, or channeled entities. But by the fourth century, this all disappears. It might have been that the prophets and visionaries were too unstable for that institutional phase of the church, but it just might have been that the drugs ran out.

My bold.

I remember reading John Allegro from my local library way back, when his book was pretty new, making a case for psychedelics being influential in early Christianity. Which made a certain amount of sense to me, when I was in my first atheistic period.

http://johnallegro.org/main/

But between my atheistic periods I had a time where I decided that atheism led inevitably to nihilism, and decided to explore the possibility that I was wrong.

Which led me to exploring eastern religions, and the possibility (as I saw it at the time) of somehow getting a way of getting in touch with ..... something greater, by meditation.

Which led in turn to going to a Transcendental Meditation introductory talk, which led in turn to a pretty mindblowing experience, which led in turn to me deciding to devote my life to the TM movement, which led in turn to me receiving the TM Sidhi techniques at the then TM HQ in Switzerland, which led in turn to me spending some time in the Flying Room in the TM HQ pretty early on in the history of the TM movement recycling the Pantanjali Yoga Sutras.

Even then, though, something rang a bell. What I'd learnt of the early Quakers, of the Shakers. It took me several years to really disassociate myself from the TM movement, but it was things like that association with the Quakers, and a few other little things (one being the way Maharishi snapped down someone who put his hand up to say that Maharishi's account of how pranayama worked wasn't strictly anatomically correct. And the way - a bit in retrospect now - that those of us who knew that it wasn't anatomically correct rationalised it away. Guilty myself, at the time, but it had its little impact.

But back to the point - I don't buy that ergotism stuff, because there were Shakers as well, and stuff like my experiences in the TM cult, the Toronto Blessing. glossolalia in certain churches, the Derren Brown Instant Conversion vid (which has been withdrawn from youtube, last I looked) leads me to believe that the combined effects of human suggestibility and peer reinforcement are a more parsimonious explanation of a pretty broad phenomenon over space and time that the particular example of Quaker converts when Fox was around.

And in fact, I don't buy the whole thing.

Suggestibility and peer pressure are enough, as I know, as a result of devoting myself to a charlatan for some years of my life.

As an aside, whether he knew that he was a charlatan or not is an interesting point. He was subject to a lot of positive reinforcement from those who regarded him as an enlightened being who was making a very positive impact on their lives, himself.

As, for another example, is the Pope. Loads of positive reinforcement from the flock.

To continue the aside, I tend to think that the Popes, Maharishis, Ted Haggards, and even perhaps Sylvia Brownes of this world are themselves as much victims as victimisers. Though they do tend to have more material goodies than those who give them time and/or money.

David B

arnoldo · 10-21-2009, 06:53 PM

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Originally Posted by Toto

The evidence is proffered in an article written by a respectable published historian, mentioned in the OP. It is admittedly speculative, but many claims of the history of the first century are necessarily speculative. That's what the discussion is about.

And the last time I checked, most of what historians do is revisionist in some sense - finding new evidence and interpretations, constructing new theories that overturn the old paradigm.

Thank you for you clarification that the OP is merely speculative. It would be interesting to study other events which were possibly (negatively) influenced by hallucinogenics such as the salem witch trials. . .

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Additionally, numerous hypotheses have been devised to explain the strange behavior that occurred in Salem in 1692. One of the most concrete studies, published in Science in 1976 by psychologist Linnda Caporael, blamed the abnormal habits of the accused on the fungus ergot, which can be found in rye, wheat and other cereal grasses. Toxicologists say that eating ergot-contaminated foods can lead to muscle spasms, vomiting, delusions and hallucinations. Also, the fungus thrives in warm and damp climates—not too unlike the swampy meadows in Salem Village, where rye was the staple grain during the spring and summer months.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/histor...tml?c=y&page=2

. . . to contrast it with the alleged positive effects of hallucinogenics on early Christianity.

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Originally Posted by Toto

You can put your fingers back in your ears now.

You just gave the perfect description of a free-thinker

mountainman · 10-21-2009, 08:15 PM

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Originally Posted by Toto

That's because Orwell had Stalin in mind, and Stalin, as we know, started off training for the priesthood, where he learned a lot.

Orwell satirised Stalin's regime.

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The original title was Animal Farm: A Fairy Story, but A Fairy Story was dropped by the US publishers for its 1946 publication. Of all the translations during Orwell's lifetime, only Telugu kept the original title. Other variations in the title include: A Satire and A Contemporary Satire

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There's no sense just shouting "Orwell" and sticking your fingers in your ears.

The same might be said for the identification of satire.

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