Ben C Smith

GDon, I can see quite a few parallels:

It is really only to say: Well done. We knew, through all the generations, that you were with us, in us, the best of the spirit of Africa and of the Americas. Knowing this, that you would actually appear, someday, was part of our strength.

The use of appearing instead of some more mundane verb, the implied pre-existence through all the generations, the notion of being both in us and with us all that time.

This quotation seems as eschatological about Obama as virtually anything Paul says about Christ. It takes someone who to all appearances should be an ordinary mortal man and makes him immortal.

I want to point out a very different text, one that I have very briefly touched upon before on this forum, that immortalizes a different hero in a different way, but a way that the NT also uses of Christ. The text is Mira Circa Nos (the original Latin is also available), the papal bull that canonized Francis of Assisi. The method of immortalizing Francis is to describe him in scriptural terms. God says that Francis is a man after his own heart; he sends Francis into the vineyard to uproot the thistles; Francis conquers Philistines; Francis leaves behind his country and his paternal house (like Abraham); he offers his own body as a burnt offering (like Isaac); and so forth.

Ben.

Toto

If you see this as an example of a human being transformed into a divine figure, why do you think that this has nothing to do with the mythicism debate?

I would see it more as Walker taking language and concepts from her Christian-new-age-gnostic background and applying them to her concept of Barack Obama.

After all, we have many examples of humans transformed into divine figures - all of the Egyptian Pharoahs and many of the Roman heads of state were transformed into divine entities, usually after their death to be sure. I'm not sure what this example from Walker adds to that old story.

mountainman

Dear Toto,

If the author Paul wrote after 30th October 312 CE then you need to rethink this through somewhat since for all intents and purposes, from that day, christians became a political entity and nation by the actions of Constantine.

If author of Paul wrote earlier than 312 CE, then the nation was transcendental. That is a word used by the ancient historian Arnaldo Momigliano concerning "early christians". Were they imaginary?


Both the tribe and the nation march better to the One True Song.
Stirring rhetoric to move the people here and there is old hat.
It happens in the US Presidential elections in 2008 and it happens
in the author of Paul, in an unknown century of antiquity.


Some people call it propaganda.


Best wishes,



Pete

GakuseiDon

Yes, that's right. The echoes to Paul are intriguing.

Thanks for the link, Ben. Very interesting.

GakuseiDon

I mean, it has nothing to do with the mythicism debate as far as I'm concerned. Maybe I'll use it at some stage in the future for that purpose, but I didn't present it as part of that debate. I thought I made that clear in my OP, but I apologise if I wasn't explicit enough there, and in the three further posts where I mention that it wasn't presented as part of that debate.

The fact that we can assume that Walker doesn't believe that Obama is a divine figure, yet uses that language anyway. How difficult would it be for someone to read that, without knowing the context, and assume that she was talking about a semi-divine figure? Anyway, as I said, I thought it was interesting, so I wanted to share it.

Toto

Why is this a fact? What do you know about Alice Walker that indicates that she doesn't believe that Obama is a divine figure?

Read up on Alice Walker's religious views. She is listed in places as a Buddhist, and in other places as a post-Christian born-again pagan "womanist" eco-spiritualist pantheist.
So when a new age spiritualist speaks of someone in these terms, I would take her at her word. She thinks that there is a divine spirit in Obama (and probably in all of us, if we could access it or if the universe decided to manifest in.)

GakuseiDon

Interesting link on Walker, Toto, thanks.

Ben C Smith

Say that five times fast. What a mouthful. Is this where our labels are taking us this century?

For the record, I for one am unable to follow your objection(s?) to GDon starting this thread. His purpose seems straightforward and clear, and, though of course it is not utterly unrelated to the historicity debate, pointing out such parallels is not intrinsically related to it.

A lot of modern readers (A) have difficulty understanding the concepts used by ancient authors and then (B) also have difficulty understanding what some modern scholars say about those concepts. In this case, for example, (A) it is not always easy to see what Paul is imagining when he writes in seemingly pre-existent terms of Jesus, and (B) once we grasp that much of Paul it is not always easy to understand why a lot of scholars do not think that Paul necessarily regarded Jesus as pre-existent. (Jeffrey Gibson has written about this on this board before.)

So modern writers (and I too) sometimes like to present parallels, examples both ancient and modern, to help explain (both to others and to ourselves).

I think ancient examples of this kind of language applied to Augustus, for example (in the Prienne inscription and in Vergil, say), really enrich our understanding of early Christian thought. And I think modern examples of this kind of language applied to Obama, in this case, can help us, with all due caution, to bridge the gap between our understanding and that of the ancients.

I myself have bookmarked the open letter for possible future reference.

Ben.

Toto

My objection is that GDon picked a phrase out of context, without seeming to know anything about the person who wrote it or the context in which it was written. And he has just continued to say oh isn't this interesting, without doing any further anaysis.

He claims that this provides some insight into Paul's letters - but what is the insight?

I also object to his somewhat coy denial that this has anything to do with the mythicist-historicist debate, that he is just beyond that.

So what do you think Alice Walker meant? Does it make a difference to you that Alice Walker does believe in spirits? That she holds new age beliefs (probably influence by Theosophy)?

What do you make of the fact that Republicans have tended to point to her works and snicker about how ridiculous her adulation of Obama is?

Ben C Smith

I thought he explained this fairly well, and I tried to do my part to explain it. See below for more.

I do not know if he was being coy or not. But a lot of threads on this board seem to swing immediately into the whole MJ debate, so is it possible he was just trying not to get into that debate this time round?

I think she means that Obama is filling a role in history that has long been looked forward to.

I also think it is possible that, when Paul speaks pre-existently of Jesus, he is doing the same thing. That is, he is not really describing him as some kind of pre-existent deity who turned human; rather, he is describing Jesus as filling a role in history (messiah, savior) that had long been looked forward to.

If this point is not clear enough yet, I am at a loss as to how to make it clearer.

Not much. I doubt she literally thinks Obama is pre-existent.

I would have to see the remarks themselves, but I suspect some are simply not used to this kind of writing in a modern context, and when they see it in ancient writings (such as the Bible) they take it very literally.

Ben.