Freethought & Rationalism Archive

DCHindley · 11-10-2012, 09:05 AM

Abe,

I wouldn't call her a "liberal" so much as a "feminist" scholar. She sees the development of Gnostic and Orthodox Christianity in the context of a battle between a traditional male dominant worldview (Orthodox) and a more egalitarian worldview (Gnostic).

Personally, I am not convinced that it is as simple as this.

DCH

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

What is Pagels' ideology? How do you define ideological? Why is Bart Ehrman not ideological? Why is a university curriculum in North Carolina more reliable than Harvard or Princeton?

Are you just throwing that label around without reason?

Elaine Pagels is a liberal. More relevantly, the scholarship of Elaine Pagels has a liberal bent. Liberalism is great when voting in democratic elections. I am all for it. It is not suitable for making decisions concerning ancient history, nor is any other ideology suitable. If Elaine Pagels wrote textbooks used in state-accredited colleges, then those textbooks would be suitable for getting an accurate understanding of ancient history. It would mean that the opinions expressed in those textbooks represent probable opinions generally held by the secular academic establishment, and the ideology of Elaine Pagels would be irrelevant. But, she instead writes popular books, vetted only by publishers interested in selling copies.

Clivedurdle · 11-10-2012, 09:08 AM

Quote:

sexism

I thought you were channeling a teapartyist!

ApostateAbe · 11-10-2012, 09:15 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Quote:

Almost all information predominant in the modern world claiming anything about what ancient people believed, not just the writings of Elaine Pagels, is bullshit. The reason why Elaine Pagels makes a distinction between "Gnostic" and "Catholic" ideas is so she could claim that the "Gnostic" ideas are much more preferable for modern Christianity. However, probable interpretations of ancient "Gnostic" beliefs are about as objectionable to modern progressive thinkers as the ancient "Catholic" beliefs.

You have misunderstood Pagels.

Kindly reread the New Testament and you will see these catholic and gnostic viewpoints throughout, almost in a continual dance. Arguably it has been edited to emphasise this discussion of viewpoints.

As Toto's quote notes above, yes the world was different but not completely different.

Quote:

"her ability to show readers that the ancient texts she studies are concerned with the great questions of human existence though they may discuss them in mythological or theological language very different from our own." ...

Take the gnostic and catholic perspectives as viewpoints. Interestingly they are not ancient, but actually can be found every day for example in a high mass or pentecostal service.

You have spent enough time in Pentecostal Churches, did you never sense these undertones? A preacher somewhere must have preached on these matters!

I don't always attend Pentecostal services, but, when I do, I make disruptions and they kick me out early. So, no, I have not spent much time in Pentecostal churches. I stand by my recommendation to depend on academic textbooks of state-accredited colleges. It takes exceptional discipline to prevent one's ideology from affecting one's understanding of ancient history, regardless of what that ideology may be. It is especially easy to bend one's understanding of ancient history according to a desirable belief system, because of the many gaps and ambiguities in ancient history. Nevertheless, ancient history is a subject of objective reality, and objective reality is not affected by what we believe.

ApostateAbe · 11-10-2012, 09:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DCHindley

Abe,

I wouldn't call her a "liberal" so much as a "feminist" scholar. She sees the development of Gnostic and Orthodox Christianity in the context of a battle between a traditional male dominant worldview (Orthodox) and a more egalitarian worldview (Gnostic).

Personally, I am not convinced that it is as simple as this.

DCH

Quote:

Originally Posted by ApostateAbe

Elaine Pagels is a liberal. More relevantly, the scholarship of Elaine Pagels has a liberal bent. Liberalism is great when voting in democratic elections. I am all for it. It is not suitable for making decisions concerning ancient history, nor is any other ideology suitable. If Elaine Pagels wrote textbooks used in state-accredited colleges, then those textbooks would be suitable for getting an accurate understanding of ancient history. It would mean that the opinions expressed in those textbooks represent probable opinions generally held by the secular academic establishment, and the ideology of Elaine Pagels would be irrelevant. But, she instead writes popular books, vetted only by publishers interested in selling copies.

Good point.

Clivedurdle · 11-10-2012, 09:17 AM

Quote:

simple

Her conclusion that male domination may be a factor does not effect the reality of these two xianities, one of which was and is declared heretical and a later iteration did have a crusade against it.

The new arch bish has raised the possibility of women bishops for example, and I do not think there can be much argument against the fact that xianity is male dominated!

Which raises a question. Is resistance to mythicism partly related to male attitudes?

Quote:

Historian Bettany Hughes goes back to the beginning of time and visits the world's oldest religious site to find startling evidence that women were part of the very birth of organised religion.

She visits a world where goddesses ruled the heavens and earth, and reveals why our ancestors thought of the divine as female. Travelling across the Mediterranean and the Near East, Bettany goes to remote places, where she encounters fearsome goddesses who controlled life and death. And she ends up in modern-day India, where the goddess is still a powerful force for thousands of Hindus.

Immersing herself in the excitement of the Durga Puja festival, Bettany experiences goddess worship first-hand, and finds out what the goddess means to her devotees

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01g8dd2

Clivedurdle · 11-10-2012, 09:21 AM

NSFW!

Quote:

L’Origine du monde (The Origin of the World) is an oil-on-canvas painted by French artist Gustave Courbet in 1866. .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L'Origine_du_monde

aa5874 · 11-10-2012, 09:23 AM

Talking of politics--the Jesus of the NT is a coalition of ancient Greek and Jewish mythology which was extremely important in politics.

Mythology and Politics were virtually inseperable. There was hardly seperation between Mythology and Politics.

The inventors of the Myth character Jesus seem to have produce a Perfect or acceptable blend of Mythology so that the Roman Politicians "crossed the aisle".

Horatio Parker · 11-10-2012, 09:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Iskander

Quote:

Originally Posted by Horatio Parker

This:

I think they believed that reality in the upper world had an earthly component. All earthly occurrences are reflections of the eternal, and eternal occurrences are reflected on Earth. If Christ as a spiritual being exists in the upper world, then he also existed in the lower, in time and space. I suspect that, for them, acceptance of the spiritual Christ constituted proof of the earthly.

As I understand Doherty's theories, this is not a conflict, since Jesus had existed as a man before his cosmic struggle with the demons.

That the ancients had a view more like our own, that they could dispense with the need for particular earthly instantiations of the upper world, is appealing. But I've seen no direct evidence for it. If you know of any, please direct me.

It is still the same today among American Catholics and others, for them it is history and claim astonishment when the godless ones refuse to believe it.

Yes, intuition is sufficient justification for the existence of God among believers today. But we don't consider it science. The ancients did, provided there was sufficient precedent. AFAICT.

rlogan · 11-10-2012, 09:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

... the Christian side...

This expression of yours "Christian Side" has no support in the literature. No serious scholar has ever used this terminology, and as it occupies the very beginning of your argument we simply cannot proceed without you offering evidence of the existence of this "Christian Side".

I'm in agreement with Aposatate Abe here that we cannot allow you to go on without the details on this new Christian Side concept.

Where is the evidence for Christian Side? You are speaking as if it is some well-defined term, when all google returns is Christian Side Hug. My argument is that there are Christians, and in terms of anatomy they do have sides - that is the whole point: there are two and not one. If you mean to speak of points of view then it is even worse because there are nearly as many opinions as there are christians.

Could you present the evidence rather than just wishful thinking about this new Christian Side theory?

Clivedurdle · 11-10-2012, 09:39 AM

There have recently been several documentaries on the BBC that take some piece of ancient history, look at the archaeology, discuss it and as part of the argument show an example from somewhere in the world.

My impression is that that is what historians do!

I have never got the impression that there has been some kind of cut off from the ancient world, the underlying assumption is that the threads can be worked out and unravelled.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tv/2011/0...-secrets.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ghsjx

Quote:

We still live in the shadow of ancient Rome - a city at the heart of a vast empire that stretched from Scotland to Afghanistan, dominating the West for over 700 years. Professor Mary Beard puts aside the stories of emperors and armies, guts and gore, to meet the real Romans living at the heart of it all.

In this programme, Mary asks not what the Romans did for us, but what the empire did for Rome.

She rides the Via Appia, climbs up to the top seats of the Colosseum, takes a boat to Rome's port Ostia and takes us into the bowels of Monte Testaccio. She also meets some extraordinary Romans: Eurysaces, an eccentric baker, who made a fortune out of the grain trade and built his tomb in the shape of a giant bread oven; Baricha, Zabda and Achiba, three prisoners of war who became Roman citizens; and Pupius Amicus, the purple dye seller making imperial dye from shellfish imported from Tunisia. This is Rome from the bottom up.

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11-10-2012, 09:23 AM	#67
aa5874 Contributor Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: the fringe of the caribbean Posts: 18,988	Talking of politics--the Jesus of the NT is a coalition of ancient Greek and Jewish mythology which was extremely important in politics. Mythology and Politics were virtually inseperable. There was hardly seperation between Mythology and Politics. The inventors of the Myth character Jesus seem to have produce a Perfect or acceptable blend of Mythology so that the Roman Politicians "crossed the aisle".

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