The Chronicles of Indestructible Life

Barack Obama for President

2008-09-06T17:20:00.003-05:00

I'm endorsing Barack Obama for President of the USA. Barack Obama has shown the leadership, character and wisdom to be the next President of the United States.

The last eight years of Republican rule have been a disaster. John McCain has only shown that he fully endorses the foreign policy disasters, economic mismanagement and corruption of the Bush administration. As the Republican National Convention has shown the Republican Party is morally and intellectually bankrupt. There is nothing to their party platform except envy, insults and exploitation of military and religious symbols.

As McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis stated, "This election is not about issues... This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” Their convention was almost totally without substance. Nothing but the stock insults of strawmen "Liberals" we've heard so much over the last 20 years on talk radio/Cable News and the shameless/cynical exploitation of military and religious symbolism.

The mainstream media doesn't have the ability to say it, for whatever reason, but Sarah Palin as vice president is ridiculous. I grew up in authentic small towns and I've lived in big cities. Being Mayor of a town of 5000 people does not provide you with the experience to govern the United States. It's laughable. The media, if they were'nt owned and operated by the Republican Party, should be openly mocking McCain's lack of judgment.

I'll concede the fact that Palin is not as deranged as Minnesota's own Michelle Bachman, who she reminds me of, but she certainly represents all that is bad with conservatives (and almost all of it is bad).

Barack Obama has impressed me from the very first time I heard him speak. He is someone I can relate to, having lived in small towns and big cities. He has thought a lot about the issues, and though I don't agree with him on everything he is closer to what needs to be done than the alternative. Barack Obama knows his stuff.

Obama has shown the judgment and seriousness which our nation needs. Joe Biden was a tremendous pick for VP. I was totally shocked that the 72 year old, cancer survivor McCain would recklessly choose a person with almost no experience and even interest in foreign policy or macro domestic economic issues. The McCain/Palin ticket scares me. The Obama/Biden ticket shows the seriousness, judgment, vision and smarts to meet the challenges the United States will have to deal with after the disastrous Bush Presidency.

I'm going to try to write more over the next few months and see if I can contribute my own Girardian/Alisonian/etc views on the election. I thought I would get this whole endorsement thing over with right from the beginning. I like Obama, even though I'm usually very wary of politics. He is the first candidate in my life time that I have felt really positive about.

Little Drummer Boy

2007-12-02T10:17:00.000-06:00

Could the Little Drummer Boy be the most Girardian Christmas animation out there?

Little Drummer Boy Part 1 of 3

Little Drummer Boy Part 2 of 3

Little Drummer Boy Part 3 of 3

Neo-Conservatism is the Rise of Neo-Paganism

2007-10-13T20:29:00.000-05:00

I was reading this article by Glenn Greenwald, and it he unknowingly gives a great Girardian critique of neo-conservative ideology. He states the following:

On a different note, is the curriculum for history classes in some American states restricted to learning about Hitler and the Nazis and 1938 and Hitler and Germany? It must be, because there are many right-wing fanatics whose entire understanding of the world is reduced in every instance to that sole historical event -- as though the world began in 1937, ended in 1945, and we just re-live that moment in time over and over and over:
Love war? You are Churchill, a noble warrior. Oppose war? You're Chamberlain, a vile appeaser. And everyone else is Hitler. That, more or less, composes the full scope of "thought" among this strain on the right.

This is great Girardian analysis, from an obviously non-Girardian. He has really stumbled on the truth of the situation. For Neo-Conservatives World War II was the founding murder. The great collective violence that unified the nation. Neo-conservatism isn't just a political movement it is a pagan religion. It wants to keep repeating this founding, collective and unanimous violence. Their rituals aren't working very well, people are just too skeptical of this new religion, they aren't joining in. So Neo-Conservatives keep rehearsing the ritual, finding new Hitlers, hoping they find someone sufficiently evil to make their rituals, incantations and human sacrifices work. A successful ritual would gather all believers and all dissenters into a cohesive, unified group, focused on the designated evil. Neo-Conservatism is the ideology of the lynch mob, it's this continuing search for an evil that we can all agree on and that we can do away with unanimously. Each event has the same characters, the evil man du jour is Hitler, the Neo-Conservatives are always Churchill and anyone who doesn't believe in these charades are appeasing Chamberlains. Greenwald is right, that's the entirety of Neo-Conservative "thought". World War II has been turned into this mythical event by which all else must be interpreted. This is obviously in stark contrast to Christianity. Christianity holds that the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the great interpretive event.

Kasey Chambers - I Still Pray

2007-08-12T20:25:00.000-05:00

Contagion: A Journal of Violence, Mimesis and Culture

2007-08-12T20:21:00.000-05:00

Great News!!! All back volumes of the great Girardian journal Contagion have been digitized and are available to download.

Do They Really Need Another Massive Human Sacrifice?

2007-08-11T14:02:00.000-05:00

This is awesome evidence for the contemporary American reality of mimetic theory.

I don't think this yearning, expectation, and hope for another large scale human sacrifice similar to 9/11 is something that's outside of conservative thought. I believe the need for human sacrifice is at the very center of contemporary, Fox News conservatism. They need the power of a televisual spectacle to unite people. They need the blood to flow, so they can feel the love.

They really don't care that much for fighting "terrorism", what they really care about is the unity that comes about after a large scale terrorist attack/human sacrifice. I don't think they're capable of actually conducting the sacrifice themselves so they must rely on the "terrorists" to don the sacrificial mask.

Mr. Bykofsky thesis seems to be that we need continuing human sacrifice to maintain unity and keep internal conflict at bay. We need human sacrifice. Some kind of massive human burnt offering to maintain our unity. He realizes that massive sacrifices, conducted by outside executioners, that unveil an evil that we can all agree on will give us the ability to project our internal disagreements, violence, disunity, psychosis and whatever else may be keeping us from being at one with our neighbor and place these negativities onto an outside other, as we did in Iraq.

There were stories about people celebrating 9/11 and it was understood that those celebrations were conducted by "Islamofascists", but Mr. Bykofsky column puts in doubt the notion that it was only "Islamofascists". Ancient human sacrifices were indeed celebrations, which relieved great stress. We are dealing with a very primitive religion here, a religion of human sacrifice. The greatest threat to American Christianity is Fox News conservatism.

The Sick Longing for Massive Destruction

2007-08-09T21:09:00.000-05:00

The Iraq War is a conundrum. No one can figure out the reasons for the invasion of Iraq. People from across the political/theological spectrum have put in enormous effort and have set forth the most creative and far-fetched reasons behind the invasion. The WMD thing was plainly bogus from the start. That Saddam was behind 9/11 was just plain ludicrous. The grab for oil was a plausible reason, but definitely not an immediate justification for the invasion of a country and the 100's of billions of dollars thrown away.

The great question remains "Why?". I think we must stop trying to come up with strategic or rational reasons. The pro-war neocons are not rational people, they're ideology is a reversion to the pagan past. A past filled with human sacrifice and witches, of darkness and demons, of pogroms and persecutions.

I read this article by Stu Bykofsky, I don't know who he is and I don't believe the article is satire (you never know anymore). Actually some of the stuff I think is most likely satire usually turns out not to be.

Mr. Bykofsky doesn't believe the human sacrifices of 9/11 and the Iraq War have been sufficient. He thinks Americans are separated from each other, that we don't have any common bonds.

There was a large thread going through the pro-war movement (movement is the wrong word, mostly it was just people sitting in front of their TVs) of this need for unity. Like the whole thing was a big football game. We all had to cheer for the same team, and if you weren't cheering loud enough for our team you must be for the other team.

I'm still not getting to the point I want to make. The conservative movement is obsessed with "Liberals". They can't stand this separation from the "Liberals", they want us all together, all tearing at the same meat. All cheering for the deaths of whoever has been designated by Fox News as the "bad guy(s)". They want to feel the electrifying thrill of unity, of all the differences and barriers falling away, everybody for once playing by their rules, holding their opinions and playing their game. They want to belong to the crowd, the unified crowd. They're sick and tired of confrontation and disagreements, of arguments and conflict. They long for large-scale human sacrifice, some kind of horrific spectacle of human death and destruction that unveils an evil that we can all agree on. That all these happy people doing their own thing will finally feel the anger they feel, that they'll finally have a purpose that they can pursue without being checked by laws or the opinions of others.

They want to stick the sword into somebody and let out the primal scream that cleanses one of low-esteem and loneliness. Instead of it being lonely me and the "them" who thwart me, it can be the beautiful and exhilarating "Us" against the evil "them".

It's the longing to be part of a lynch mob. The freedom to unreservedly thwart whatever you happen to see as evil at that moment. To be around people who wholeheartedly agree with you, who are thinking the same thoughts, who, as the mutilated "evil" lies dead before them, feel all their insecurities and the barriers between individuals dissolve. To stand around the mutilated corpse of a person or a country and finally be able to call the people around them "buddies" and sing some kind of macabre version of "Kum By Yah". To finally have society ordered to their liking.

They long for sacrificed dead bodies and the mob unity that is always found around them. They long for decisive violence and death that clearly delineates good and evil, a human sacrifice that will bring us all together.

Mercy Now

2007-05-22T19:11:00.000-05:00

This is a great song by Mary Gauthier.

Rene Girard on YouTube

2007-05-09T20:56:00.000-05:00

Haven't actually listened to this, but certainly seems pretty interesting.

COV&R Conference

2007-05-09T20:45:00.000-05:00

The 2007 Colloquium on Violence and Religion conference is coming up in July. The list of abstracts looks pretty interesting, can't wait to read the actual papers. As an extra I'll link to video of Rene Girard's speech Violence, Victims and Christianity.

King Josiah

2007-05-09T20:36:00.000-05:00

The latest scholarship and research seems to show that King Josiah had an enormous influence on Biblical history. This is related to our recent discussion on Achan, because it seems that Joshua in the Book of Joshua was actually a not-so-well disguised projection of King Josiah. King Josiah instituted sweeping reforms and the Book of Joshua seems to be propaganda for those reforms. Margaret Barker, though not dealing with Joshua or the politics re the Book of Joshua, has a great speech on the the symbolic reforms of King Josiah. What Did King Josiah Reform?

The Forgiving Victim

2007-05-08T21:10:00.000-05:00

James Alison's visit to the House of Mercy was very formative in my Christian theological developement. Quite possibly the best sermon I've ever witnessed, Staggered Vision. Anyway, he seems to be conducting a class in London. I suggest to run, not walk to it.

The Iraq War Did Not Take Place?

2007-05-08T20:11:00.000-05:00

I think it was Baudrillard who said the first Gulf War did not take place. Well I think it's my contention that the current Gulf War isn't really a war, but that it's some kind of post-modern, international atonement ritual. An attempt on the macro-level to revive the primitive schemes and forms of collective/mob murder. It was an attempt to restore confidence in the voice of the mob. Anyway, I came across this today, I think the remarks of right-wing pundit Dick Morris are relevant to our discussions on the atonement and scapegoating. Mr. Morris asserts,

MORRIS: I think that withdrawal from Iraq — it obviously gives al Qaeda a huge victory. Huge victory. On the other hand, if we stay in Iraq, it gives them the opportunity to kill more Americans, which they really like.

One of the things, though, that I think the antiwar crowd has not considered is that, if we’re putting the Americans right within their arms’ reach, they don’t have to come to Wall Street to kill Americans. They don’t have to knock down the trade center. They can do it around the corner, and convenience is a big factor when you’re a terrorist.

There it is the atonement theme of someone else supposedly dying for us, dying so that we don't have to, regardless of whether paranoia/lies form the basis of the belief in the supposed need for the sacrifice.

Richard Koenigsberg has been doing some great work re the sources of war and genocide.

In the atonement ritual are two goats. One goat which was Azazel, somehow synonymous with evil/Satan/the Devil, was led outside the city of the walls and thrown over a cliff. The other goat which was Yahweh was killed in front of the people and the blood brought into the temple to repair creation and bind the people together and cover the people from the violence of other members of the community.

So in the Iraq war we have two sets of people, two sacrificial classes. The first class is comprised of the Iraqi people. They, from the perspective of the persecutors in the ritual, correspond to the Azazel goat, they represent evil and are unceremoniously killed outside the camp. All sin is laid on the Azazel goat, making us into innocents.

This is all from the American perspective. The Yahweh goat corresponds to the American soldiers. From Koenigsberg,

According to Marvin, “The community celebrates and reveres its insiders turned outsiders. From within the boundaries, the community fears and worships these outsiders it consumes to preserve its life.” Soldiers are celebrated, revered and worshipped because they (like Christ) take the sacrificial burden upon themselves. They are the designated victims who are required to suffer—and perhaps to die—for other members of the group. The soldier is an “insider turned outsider,” member of the community who has been thrust outward from within the nation’s boundaries in order to do battle over there—on foreign soil.

He asserts that we delegate the execution of our soldiers to our enemies.

War as a unifier of the national community works best when people are able to avert their eyes from the sight of the victims; when they don’t have to look closely at what happens to the bodies of soldiers. People enjoy the idea of war, but would prefer to participate at a distance. They would rather not see the maimed bodies. Sight of a soldier’s mutilated body drains warfare of its glory.

Jesus in the Gospels represents both goats in the atonement. He is Yahweh who is killed in front of the people, but He is also the Azazel goat which is led outside the walls carrying the sins of the people, carrying the violence and dissension of the people and thrown over the cliff. The Yahweh goat is a substitute for the High Priest who also represents Yahweh. The goat is a substitute for the High Priest, so the High Priest can be resurrected in the Holy of Holies and walk out of the temple raised from the dead. The atonement ritual is a unifier, it disguises the violence done to Yahweh and the scapegoat. Jesus making the ritual come alive in history shows that it is the mob that is actually killing the Yahweh goat which is the substitute for the High Priest.

Lovers in a Dangerous Time

2007-05-06T22:27:00.000-05:00

Lovers in a Dangerous Time from Bruce Cockburn and a cover from Barenaked Ladies.

Stonings and Sin Laid on Innocent People

2007-05-06T19:59:00.000-05:00

I've been discussing the stoning/murder of Achan so this post over at Metafilter caught my attention. It's almost astounding that collective, lynch mob murders, in their most barbaric/primitive, most raw form still take place in our world today. This isn't the highly mediated lynch mob of the Iraq war, where people sat around their TVs watching Fox News waiting for "Shock and Awe" to start, this is a story of a group people picking up stones and brutally murdering a young girl to uphold some kind of order or unity. I know for certain, without really knowing anything about the situation that this girl is not guilty, that this girl surrounded by a group of murderers, bloody, dying a horrific death, for supposedly breaking some kind of "law" is a scapegoat. The same kind of "law" that Achan supposedly broke. As a commenter at Metafilter, speaking of another stoning, said "...all that was left was a mutilated body slumped over. It looked like an animal rather than a human. It was savage and nauseating." It's obvious that this girl is a scapegoat, but it should also be obvious with Achan, I understand that he is our scapegoat, but by the 20th century we should be able to understand that Achan is a scapegoat in the same way that this girl and Jesus were scapegoats.

I'm sure the people who were involved in this lynching were quite happy with themselves. They had punished an evil-doer. They felt very close to each other, they felt very good about each other. United in a job well done. I'm reminded of this photo from a Duluth, Minnesota lynching, it's a very graphic, disgusting and as the Metafilter commenter said, "savage and nauseating", but this is the way the crowd looked as it stood around Achan's dead body and the mutilated bodies of his children. Here's the photo (rated graphic and disgusting, but it's from the Minnesota Historical Society site). The people standing around the mutilated bodies, posing for the camera, thinking they delivered some kind of justice. This is the way all lynch mobs look. This is the way the people around Achan looked, this is the way the people around Jesus looked, this the way the people around Stephen looked, this is the way lynch mobs look. They all look happy and sure of themselves, because so many others around them look happy and sure of themselves. They all believe in the guilt of their scapegoat and in their own righteousness and goodness. You must remember that we Americans aren't very far removed from scenes like the above. That photo was from 1920's Duluth, Minnesota.

The mob feels a tremendous amount of unity after a lynching. It feels to them as if a god has blessed them with peace and unity. This is the foundation of all primitive religion. Religion begins around the body of a dead lynch mob victim. The community in world-ending crisis one minute and the next after they have united to kill a transgressor falls under an indescribable peace. Gods and religions are formed in this unity and peace around a dead body. The thing with Christianity though, some one speaks up, before or after the lynching and says, "this person is/was not guilty". This destroys everything, this is the sword that Jesus brings, because people will retaliate and seek revenge on the murderers if they don't believe the victim was guilty. So it's either endless reciprocal/retributive violence or people with broken and repentant hearts putting a stop to it. The Gospels destroy the idea that the scapegoat is guilty and the lynch mob is innocent and righteous.

The Gospels make a big deal about Peter denying Jesus. Peter was not able to separate himself from the crowd. He still believed the crowd had all authority, that the crowd was the voice of Yahweh. Even Pilate was not able to resist the lynch mob. The Gospels tell us that everybody was involved in the lynching of Jesus, all institutions, all people, even the disciples were not able to resist the lynch mob. They were all lost in the flood of violence that had rained down on earth and crushed Jesus. It wasn't until Jesus returned, forgiving them that they were able to resist the narrative of the lynch mob and begin telling another story about Jesus. Stephen became the first martyr by trying to tell the story, by proclaiming Jesus' innocence.

Rene Girard in The Scapegoat said, "The Gospels constantly reveal what the texts of historical persecutors, and especially mythological persecutors, hide from us: the knowledge that their victim is a scapegoat...".

Achan and the Crucifixion of Jesus

2007-05-06T13:03:00.000-05:00

The next step is to lay out the argument that there is no essential difference between the mob lynching of Achan and the crucifixion of Jesus. In the despicable mob lynching of Achan and his family there is still the belief that the insane and ravenous mob, who the Psalms describe as packs of dogs, or herds of bulls or the "strong beasts of Bashaan", is murdering these isolated individuals in the service of Yahweh. Structurally the Gospel narratives and the Achan story are the same. The only difference is that the Gospels destroy the idea that the mob is killing the isolated victim in the service of Yahweh. The mob still thinks they're doing the service of Yahweh by killing Jesus, but in fact they're killing Yahweh himself. The mob is completely wrong, they literally do not know what they are doing. The mob that killed Achan was also operating under false assumptions, they thought Achan caused the defeat at Ai, but Achan could not return from the dead to tell them that they were wrong. Jesus came back from the dead, his voice was not extinguished by that of the mob. The mob's narrative was no longer the sole story. Jesus was speaking, and was now speaking with the full glory of Yahweh. He comes to Paul, the man who was continuing to murder the body of Christ, and says, not "why don't you believe in me?", but "Why are you persecuting me?". Jesus/Yahweh confronts Paul with the light of Genesis 1:3, the light of the holy of holies, and shows him that he does not know what he is doing. That Paul is not serving Yahweh by being part of the lynch mob, but in fact is killing Yahweh, the god he purportedly serves. This sudden revelation literally blinds him. Now the certainty that comes in the total, all-engulfing unity of the mob falls apart, Paul is created as a man by Yahweh. Paul is no longer part of the flood of violence that continues to kill Yahweh and his servants.

During the atonement ritual the blood Yahweh was spread throughout the temple the left over blood, though, was poured underneath the altar. In Revelation 6:9 this blood is shown to be the souls of the martyrs. The death of the martyrs are included in the atonement death of Jesus, they are assumed to be part of the great atonement.

In John 20:21–23 Jesus breathed into the disciples, as Yahweh breathed into Adam in Genesis. "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" The word translated "forgive" also means to bear. He is telling is disciples to forgive/bear the sins of others. He is creating them as high priests, as Adam was a high priest, He is telling them to do what Achan did involuntarily, what the servant in Isaiah 53 did, what Jesus himself did, to bear the sins of others. To carry the sins of others so that the people will not destroy themselves, so that they will be transformed, so that they will be created in the same way the disciples were created when Jesus/Yahweh breathed into them and gave them the Holy Spirit, and gave them the ability to no longer conform to the mob, but to conform to Jesus. Jesus in the Gospels is creating the World. He is calming the flood waters which are the murderous crowd.

In Matthew 23:35 Jesus compares his death to all the other murders and mob lynchings in the Old Testament from the first to the last.

Easter Eyes

2007-05-04T19:31:00.000-05:00

This is a great insight, a very succinct theological summary from S. Mark Heim and the Grow Mercy blog.

The Achan Story - Addendum

2007-05-04T09:30:00.000-05:00

In my rush to finish up last night before bed time I forgot a couple important details in the conclusion.

In Chapter 8 Joshua goes against Ai again. You would think that since it was Achan's fault that the first attack failed on Ai Joshua wouldn't really need to change strategy. It wasn't the strategy that caused the defeat it was Achan stealing the loot, but that's not how Joshua sees things. He knows it was a strategic failure and that he violated God's commandments re leading all of Israel into battle. So this time Joshua does in fact lead all the newly reunited Israel into battle, he doesn't sit back and let just a small contingent do the dirty work.

The second interesting thing is that in 8:2 he immediately rescinds the ban, now it ain't so bad to have privatized loot.

The first attack ended with the human sacrifice of Achan, the second attack ended with subdued animal sacrifice.

Chickamauga by Uncle Tupelo

2007-05-04T08:19:00.001-05:00

I love this video.

The Achan Story

2007-05-03T21:52:00.000-05:00

Jericho was decimated. Except for Rahab and her family, every living thing within the walls was killed. They burnt the city with fire, all men, woman, children and any unborn babies were burned alive, but before destroying the city and all the lives in it, Joshua, as verse 6:24 tells us, hauls out all the silver, the gold, the vessels of brass and iron to keep in the Lord’s treasury. Joshua was feeling pretty good about himself, in Joshua 6:27 it says his fame was noised throughout all the country. Joshua could feel the power, he could feel the fear emanating from the neighboring peoples.

Joshua, as the text hints, is feeling a might bit of pride. He immediately wants to continue his victories, so he sends some spies out to check out the city of Ai. Presumably the spies tell him that because our army is so tough and you are such a great leader Joshua it won’t take much to smite little old Ai.

Joshua, still partying and enjoying his victory and new found fame, doesn’t find it necessary to send a full force of people to conquer Ai, he doesn’t even find it necessary to go himself. He sends a small contingent of men to labor in the battlefields of Ai. The soldiers are probably wondering why do they have to go and do this harsh duty while everybody else gets to stay back and continue the party. Joshua is probably even showing off all the loot in the treasury to the better connected people. Joshua like any proud man is sure that Ai will fall at the very mention of his name. He is convinced that the people Ai will start running as soon they see Joshua’s army.

The soldiers know something isn’t right. Joshua isn’t coming with them. They remember the words of Numbers 27:15-21, Joshua is supposed to go out before them and Joshua is supposed to lead them back in, not some just a small contingent of them, but all of Israel.

The predictable happens, the soldiers without their leader pretty much turn tail and run at the slightest sign of resistance. A small number of them are killed. Joshua is not there to lead them. If Joshua doesn’t consider it important enough to be on the battlefield they don’t think it is either. They want to get back and take a look at all that loot in the treasury too, to sit back and bask in the victory at Jericho a little longer, just like their leader Joshua.

Word gets back to camp that the army has been beaten, beaten bad, humiliated even. Joshua and all the elders immediately get all dramatic. Something bad has happened and they, of course still full themselves, know that it’s not their fault. They will blame somebody else. He immediately starts blaming the soldiers for the defeat, and they’re thinking, well Joshua it’s not really our fault you were supposed to be out there with us. Our buddies and brothers have been killed because you stayed home and didn’t send an adequate force. Joshua doesn’t immediately sense the anger being directed at him, he’s more worried about how he will be perceived by the Caananites.

Israel is in crisis, Joshua tells them that this defeat means that Yahweh is no longer with them. Joshua threatens them with looming destruction. The people are scared, angry at Joshua, angry at one another, actual internecine violence may be taking place, recrimination and blame are circulating. Joshua, to deflect criticism of himself, tells them that the only possible cause of the defeat is the sin of the people. Someone has taken the accursed thing, and that is the only reason that Israel was defeated. Forget all the strategic considerations, sin is the reason for the defeat. The story only names Achan as the transgressor, but it also says that all Israel sinned. This might seem contradictory, but I can see how people might reconcile the two statements, but that’s not all we have to consider, verse 8:2 says, after all the commotion in verse 7 about the accursed thing, that after Ai it is OK to take the plunder and accursed thing. I’ll use this little detour to lay the basis for my belief that Achan was not the only one in the story that was in possession of the accursed thing.

Joshua thinks he has discovered the cause of defeat, and of course it isn’t him. It is one person, only one person. To accuse more will more only cause greater dissension. He already knows who will be blamed for the defeat, it’s definitely not him or any of the elders. It will be someone who cannot fight back, and more importantly it will be someone who is isolated, weak and unattractive, with no one to defend him or become his advocate. There is no advocate for the defense in this story, the voice of the victim/scapegoat will be almost totally crushed. (Unlike Isaiah 53, many Psalms, Job and the Gospels)

Because of all the dissension/retributive violence/fear/guilt in the community Joshua decides to conduct an Atonement ritual. Atonement literally means “At one ment”. The goal of all atonement rituals is to unite the people. This idea of atonement, this idea of a scapegoat ritual, is not just common in primitive communities, it is nearly universal. The Greek pharmakos immediately comes to mind. The idea of all atonement rituals is for the sin/dissension/violence of all the people to be transferred to a scapegoat/pharmakos. (we see the pharmokos ritual in the New Testament in Luke 4:28-30, there was nothing magical about Jesus walking through the crowd, in the pharmakos ritual no one person was designated as the executioner, the people couldn’t touch the pharmakos, they just kept crowding around him until he jumped off the cliff of his own accord, but Jesus had nothing to do with this, his desires were not in accordance with the mob, so he just walked right out between them. Keep this in mind when Achan makes his confession)

Joshua isn’t searching for justice, he will be running an atonement ritual. He wants to remove the fear/violence/sin from the community. He needs to designate one person to do this. He tells the people that he will use the Urim and Thummin to find the wrongdoer. He lines them all up, a lot of people are worried because they have loot at home, maybe by this time though they were smart enough to get rid of it. He makes it clear that the person who he designates is guilty of causing the defeat at Ai. That this person, not Joshua, is guilty of causing the deaths of their loved ones, for causing all the internal dissension and for causing the shadow of destruction to hang over them. These are serious crimes that affect everybody. A logical disconnect here, of course, but mobs and people in crisis aren’t really concerned with logic. How does the privatization of a small amount of loot, especially if the possession of said loot is not common knowledge, bring about a military defeat.

So the atonement ritual begins, one by one, in great fear, they approach Joshua. One by one Joshua forgives their sin, he pronounces them not guilty, and as the ritual sin bearer he absorbs their sin. Joshua frees the people of their sin, this is a very intense situation. There is a lot of anger here, the people are waiting to unload. Joshua is going to deliver them a scapegoat and it’s not going to be him.

The ugly despised and isolated Achan is chosen and Joshua discharges the sin upon him. Joshua is a substitute for all the people, he has absorbed their sin and Achan becomes the substitute for Joshua and accordingly becomes the substitute for all the people, the doom that was to befall them now will befall Achan and only Achan. At this juncture in the story I’m going to assume, even though there are differing opinions, that no one brings up Deuteronomy 19:15. That no one brings up the fact that it is Joshua who was gone astray, because he has forgotten that a man’s guilt can be proved only through two witnesses, not through the Urim and Thummin. That no one brings up the fact that Joshua wasn’t subject to the ritual.

So Achan is taken out by the angry and delirious mob and murdered. Not only Achan though, but his whole family, his sons and daughters. His sons and daughters were not guilty, but Joshua didn’t want them around to bring up doubts about Achan’s guilt later on.

Achan is a scapegoat, just like Jesus. Achan wasn’t a perfect man, but he was innocent of the charges that were made against him. Achan was not killed because he had some loot, he was killed, in Caiaphas’s words, because it was better that one man die than the whole nation be destroyed. The murder of Achan by the collective caused the community to be “At-One” again. Achan in this story is a precursor or an expectation of the Christ figure. Achan became the bond of the convenant. The murder of Achan was what kept the people together. The New Testament, of course, condemns this idea of “At-One-Ment” at the expense of an isolated individual.

One more thing at the end here. Jesus is the good shepherd, He leads them in and out, he doesn’t lose any of his sheep, he doesn’t scapegoat any of them. Joshua can’t say the same.

One more thing, almost immediately after the homicidal rage that consumes Achan is quenched, while the people may still be covered with the “At-One-Ment” blood of Achan, Joshua lifts the ban. Peace has returned, but it is the peace of the world, not the peace of Yahweh, it is the peace born from unanimous hatred of a supposed evildoer, which Rene Girard has found to be the foundation of all pagan religions.

I realize that there are a lot of themes here that need further expansion, but I’m only a lowly blogger.

Achan and the Distortion of Desire Part III

2007-05-03T12:50:00.000-05:00

Rene Girard says the tenth commandment term “covet” means “desire”, in this excerpt he discusses the idea of mimetic desire. I think what he says can be summarized, at least partially, in this way. If we do not follow the proscriptions laid out in the second half of the ten commandments we are in danger of being created in the image of our neighbor. If we become doubles of our neighbor we will be desiring the same things, not just the same things, we will desire to become our neighbor, and if we follow the progression in the second half of the ten commandments this will result in murder.

Important Additional Readings:

Skandalon

Satan and Scandal

Distortion of Desire

Scapegoat for the World

Achan and Atonement Part II

2007-05-03T11:14:00.000-05:00

The Law in Joshua 7 serves not to keep people together, but to exclude. There’s a juxtaposition between the Achan story and the story of Rahab, who is part of the story of Jericho. Rahab, because she was not an Israelite should have been subject to the “ban”. She should have been murdered along with her family and the rest of the Jerichoites, but Rahab and her family were allowed to live. Joshua, apparently setting aside the legislation of Deuteronomy 20:16-18, allows Rahab, the prostitute, and her family to live. Rahab had submitted to and pledged allegiance to Joshua’s war machine. Rahab was the ultimate “outsider”, but because she surrendered to Joshua’s will she became an “insider”. Achan, was an “insider”, he had the correct lineage, but because he did not completely submit to the will of Joshua, he made himself an “outsider”.

The stories of Rahab and Achan were used to create boundaries and norms. Those who voluntarily submitted to the Law would become or remain “insiders”. Those who transgressed the Law would become “outsiders”. The punishment for being an outsider was death. The story of Achan was directed at the “insiders”, warning them that if they transgressed the Law or didn’t follow the dictates of whoever was the central authority at that time they could be subject to the death penalty. This text is intended to coerce people into submission by using the threat of homicidal violence.

I think this text is about more than just the Law and the penalties for breaking the law, or in Rahab’s case the advantages of following the Law . Breaking the Law, if those transgressions are allowed to run their full course will inevitably result in death, the actual, real world deaths of the transgressor and most likely the real world deaths of others. Most likely the death of others first, and then the death of the transgressors. The second half of the ten commandments is entirely concerned with forestalling violence. It shows that even small transgressions, if not somehow prevented from running their full course will implacably end in homicide. You shall not covet, meaning you shall not be envious of your neighbor, of either your neighbor’s possessions or your neighbors “being”. You shall not bear false witness, I think could mean you shall not project your negative beliefs and will to violence onto your neighbor. You shall not steal, I guess this means your neighbor’s possessions or your neighbor’s “being”. You shall not commit adultery, becoming directly entangled in rivalrous relations with your neighbor. Finally, the result of all these smaller sins is murder. “Thou shalt not kill”. An immediate modern example of this downward spiral is in marital relations that end in murder, I think if you look closely at some of these spousal murder cases, they follow this trajectory. So following the Law is very important, because in the end it will prevent the killing of your neighbor or neighbors.

Atonement

2007-05-02T20:46:00.000-05:00

I haven’t really written anything recently, so I gotta warm myself up and get those brain cells pumping (or whatever brain cells do) again. I want to write about the Atonement, but it’s such a large subject and there’s so much to explain and go over I don’t know where to begin. So to get myself going, I think I’m just going to rewrite, reorganize so old stuff. I think my best stuff so far has been the posts re Achan. So I think that’s where I will begin.

Achan and Atonement

The story of Achan in Joshua 7 is an atonement ritual. Caiaphas explained the basis of all atonement rituals in John 11:49-50, “…that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.”

The Achan story is about a crisis, all scapegoating rituals arise from tumult and societal disintegration. Achan in this story is a scapegoat. Achan is an atonement sacrifice, given by Joshua to the people, or a better description would be the rapidly forming mob.

As I’m reading commentaries on this story, I sense this, I don’t know, dichotomy, between the Law and what Jesus and the New Testament are trying to explain. The Deuteronomists want us to believe it is the Law that holds things together. That by obeying the Law, following the dictates of the Law, our group, culture, tribe, society or whatever community will not collapse in a spiral of jealousy, rivalry and ultimately uncontrollable violence and retributive murder. The Law formed the bonds of society. It’s what kept everybody together. It was Yahweh’s Law that kept society together, not Yahweh himself, thus the idea that if you transgress the Law you would be offending Yahweh. Violations of the Law would bring divine punishment. You get the idea of the wrath of God falling upon the sinner. Transgressions and trangressors of the Law must be expelled. Law-breakers must pay. Atonement becomes the removal of sin.

In Numbers 27:15-21 Moses asks God for a man to lead Israel,

17Which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in; that the congregation of the LORD be not as sheep which have no shepherd.

And God says,

...at his word shall they go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he, and all the children of Israel with him, even all the congregation.

In this story Joshua, who also can be called Jesus, is not a Good Shepherd. In John 10 Jesus states that He is the Good Shepherd. In John 10 Jesus begins discussing the Sheep Gate. The Sheep Gate was what the sacrificial sheep passed through on their way to the altar. Like Joshua in this story, Jesus says that some sacrifice the sheep without entering through the gate. Unlike Joshua, Jesus will lay down his life for his sheep, and not only that, but the sheep themselves will be given the courage to follow him into the sacrificial machinery and be led to and from pasture. I definitely haven’t made it clear yet, and probably won’t for a long time, Jesus will say that He is the bond of creation, not the Law. It is not the Law that will draw all men together, but Jesus when He enters the sacrificial machinery of society and is lifted up.

New Sermon from James Alison and the Wrath of God

2007-04-18T20:21:00.000-05:00

This is quite simply a miraculous sermon by James Alison. I shouldn't heap too much praise on him, but he may be one the clearest thinking theologians out there. This is a discussion re the Parable of the Vineyard and it he gives a pretty good definition of what the wrath of God actually is. "The wrath is coming in a form which you do not recognize. It's coming in the form of the Lord who is the Son, because Joseph was both the Lord and the Son, and it's as the one who is cast out, that the Lord is coming, and actually being the cast out one, being the victim before whom you might be put to shame is a far harder coming than the wrathful one which John the Baptist imagined. Because it means that you all will have to stand before that one and be ashamed in order to look upon the one whom you have pierced."

I Might Be Back

2007-04-15T20:00:00.000-05:00

It's been a while. I'm just going to brainstorm some topics.

1. Is the Genesis Creation story a foretelling of the life and passion of Jesus Christ?

2. Is the Easter story a story about the creation of the world?

3. Is the world created at the crucifixion of Jesus?

4. Does the Genesis Creation story correspond to the Day of Atonement?

5. Why do adherents to the Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory insist on a vengeful god?

6. Why does Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory fit so well with consumerist society?

7. Is it a coincidence that the rise of Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory corresponds to the rise of consumerist society?

8. Why does the Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory maintain that there is basically no consequence to sin other than that it makes "God" angry. I believe PSA fundamentally misunderstands the nature of God.

9. Why does PSA deny the idea of human wrath and human violence?

That's all right now.

Uncle Tupelo

2007-03-27T22:10:00.000-05:00

Found this old Uncle Tupelo footage.

Yahweh and U2

2007-03-26T20:36:00.000-05:00

I like how this video pretty much says that Jesus and Yahweh are one and the same. The eyes of Jesus are the eyes of Yahweh. Jesus was the god of the Old Testament. Jesus created the world. Jesus was Yahweh incarnate. Yahweh was the Son of God.

James Alison

2006-11-14T22:24:00.000-06:00

An Atonement Update. A chapter from James Alison's upcoming book, Undergoing God: dispatches from the scene of a break in.

Creation and Atonement - Darkness

2006-11-12T19:56:00.000-06:00

In Genesis 1:2 what is this "darkness" that is spread over the abyss. Margaret Barker says, "The holy of holies was the place of the pre-created light of Day One, but in the temple this was in fact the darkness of the divine presence in the holy of holies. Texts which describe what happened before the world was created, or what happened in eternity, are describing rituals in the holy of holies..."

Psalm 18:11

He made darkness his covering, his canopy around him— the dark rain clouds of the sky.

Psalm 97:2

Clouds and thick darkness surround him; righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne.

Darkness was a characteristic of theophanies, God appeared in darkness. Margaret Barker says, "That the Davidic monarchs had indeed become ‘God and King’ in the holy of holies, and that this had not been forgotten, is confirmed by Philo’s extraordinary statement about Moses: he became god and king when he entered the darkness where God was..."

Darkness is thick clouds, like the clouds of incense in the holy of holies. Is darkness created matter that God is shrouded in, like the veil which represents created matter? Is this "Darkness" Yahweh? Then when Yahweh comes out of the Holy of Holies He is declared light?

In the Gospels, at the Crucifixion, we have darkness covering the earth. Is this the same "Darkness" of Genesis 1:2?

Creation and Atonement - Waters and the Flood

2006-11-04T18:30:00.000-06:00

"The LORD sits enthroned over the flood", Psalm 29:10.

Psalm 93
1The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is established, that it cannot be moved. 2Thy throne is established of old: thou art from everlasting. 3The floods have lifted up, O LORD, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves. 4The LORD on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea.

Psalm 18:4
4The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid.

Psalm 24
1The earth is the LORD's, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. 2For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods.

Isaiah 51
10Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over?

Margaret Barker says "Jerusalem and its temple, the centre of the whole creation, had been established as dry land in the midst of the watery chaos."

At creation the Lord subdued and bound the waters. The Waters and the Flood are very important in Biblical imagery. What do they represent?

Psalm 69 - Straightforwardly says the Waters and Flood are the people. The deep waters are the persecutors.

1Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. 2I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me...4They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of mine head: they that would destroy me, being mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty: then I restored that which I took not away...14Deliver me out of the mire, and let me not sink: let me be delivered from them that hate me, and out of the deep waters. 15Let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me.

From the Girardian Lectionary, the flood is collective violence. It's a deluge of collective violence against a single victim. The story of Noah is like the story of the Gerasene Demoniac, it's a reversal, not the single victim but the community that is engulfed in the Flood. The Lord lifts up the single victim.

Psalm 65
5By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou answer us, O God of our salvation; who art the confidence of all the ends of the earth, and of them that are afar off upon the sea: 6Which by his strength setteth fast the mountains; being girded with power: 7Which stilleth the noise of the seas, the noise of their waves, and the tumult of the people.

Revelation 17:15 is quite explicit.
15And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

The Waters in Genesis refer to peoples and multitudes.

Psalm 124
2If it had not been the LORD who was on our side, when men rose up against us: 3Then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us: 4Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul: 5Then the proud waters had gone over our soul. 6Blessed be the LORD, who hath not given us as a prey to their teeth. 7Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers: the snare is broken, and we are escaped. 8Our help is in the name of the LORD, who made heaven and earth.

The Waters are hostile forces or enemies, see Isaiah 8:7, the King of Assyria is described as Waters. Daniel 9:26 describes the Prince coming to destroy the city as a flood.

From James Alison and the Girardian Lectionary:

The story of Noah is less obviously a story of origins than either that of Adam and Eve or Cain and Abel, yet since it, too, is subjected to a christological re-reading in the apostolic witness, I beg indulgence for a quick glimpse at this story too. In the first letter of Peter it is pointed out that in the days of Noah "a few, that is eight persons, were saved through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you" (1 Pet 3:20-21). That is to say, the water of Baptism corresponds to the water of the flood. Yet Baptism, we know from Paul, is being immersed in the death of Christ, so as to be able to share in his resurrection, and that it is he, and after him, the Church, which the Ark prefigured. This implies a rather particular christological re-reading of the Noah story: the implication is that the Ark actually went under the flood rather than escaping it miraculously! In this re-reading, we would have all the violence abounding on the face of the earth, and, at a time of particular mimetic crisis of indifferentiation, symbolized by the Flood, the collective putting to death of someone (Noah) or a group (Noah and his family). It was this putting to death which brought about peace, permitting the re-establishment of order, the categorization of animals, and the setting up of a new, peaceful tribal system. There are of course many myths of this sort whereby a more or less hidden collective expulsion or murder is seen as producing a new social order, where fruit, or animals, or foodstuffs, start to abound as the result of a mysterious visitation in which it can either be the collectivity which perishes at the hand of a god, or a god which perishes at the hand of a collectivity, and as a prize, leaves behind the basis for the new culture. The Noah story as we have it could very well be a Jewish demythologization of just such a story in the light of their experience of salvation from out of Egypt leading to the setting up of the Covenant. Here, Noah is saved from out of the flood, and God makes a covenant with him never more to destroy all flesh.

Again from the Girardian Lectionary, Paul Nuechterlein writes,

Another way of conceiving sinking down into the water is to become caught up in the swirling of scandal around the scapegoat, to get caught up in the flood of violence. Peter and all the disciples will get caught up in this flood that kills Jesus. Jesus will die because of the flood, but he alone is not swept up in it. This is the image of Noah and the great flood. All people on earth get swept up in a flood of violence except Noah and his family. Jesus dies during a flood of such violence; but, in another sense, he his kept free of its ultimate effects by not returning violence for violence. Instead, held in the ark of the tomb, he rises on the third day as forgiveness, not vengeance. In this sense, he has willingly succumbed to the violence but not gotten swept up in it as a perpetrator of it.

Is Peter sinking down in the water a reference to Psalm 69 and Genesis 1:2. Moreover, Jesus walking on the water and calming the stormy sea also a reference to Genesis 1:2. The waters of Baptism also refers to Genesis 1:2.

Genesis 1:2 - Invisibility

2006-11-04T10:16:00.000-06:00

To state again, I believe Genesis 1 is referring to the Atonement ritual. In the Bible Atonement and creation are the same things.

Genesis 1:2, in the Hebrew, says that the earth had become chaos and vacant. The prophet Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 4:23, also saw the earth become chaos and vacant. He offers a clue about what is going on in Genesis. In Jeremiah 4:22, he says that what has brought about the chaos and waste is the people's foolishness and lack of understanding and wisdom. The people have not known God. They know how to do evil, but they don't know how to do good. Isaiah 34:11 also notes chaos and vacancy. Isaiah notes that this chaos and vacancy has been caused by bloodshed.

Chaos and vacant in Hebrew are "tohu and bohu". These words are pretty much synonymous and can be translated as "chaos", "desolation", "wasteland", "emptiness", "empty/unreal/a place of idols", "vanity/vain", "futile", "void", with an implicit understanding of evil.

Interestingly the Septuagint says that the earth was "invisible and unformed". Hebrews 11:1-3 says that "what is seen was not made out of what was visible."

2 Enoch states:

Before anything existed at all, from the very beginning, whatever is I created from non-being, and from the invisible things into the visible.Before any visible things had come into existence, and the light had not yet opened up, I, in the midst of the light, moved around in the invisible things, like one of them, as the sun moves around from east to west and from west to east. But the sun has rest; yet I did not find rest, because everything was not yet created. And I thought up the idea of establishing a foundation, to create a visible creation (Charlesworth, 1983, 143)

The "invisible" is the Kingdom of Heaven.

New hypothesis...Genesis 1:1-2 should be translated like this, "With Wisdom God created the Heavens and Earth, and the Earth was invisible and darkness was on the Abyss and the Spirit of God fluttered/hovered on the Waters." I'm, of course, not going for a direct translation from anything, I'm trying to understand how Jesus and the first Christians understood this text.

In Genesis 1:2 the creation is still unseen and invisible. Is the temple the Earth? The Temple in Jewish mythology was understood to be/represent the Earth. It was buried in chaos, waste, void, waters, the deep, the Abyss, human violence and the Flood, but it will emerge, even though it is still unseen. What is being described in Genesis 1 is not a geologic or biological creation. It has nothing to do with evolution or the big bang. If I am understanding this all correctly I should be able to find a lot of New Testament support.

Wisdom

2006-10-28T21:21:00.000-05:00

As background to our discussion on the Genesis creation story and the figure of Wisdom, I suggest reading Margaret Barker's great essay "Where Shall Wisdom Be Found" (PDF)

Creation and Atonement - Wisdom

2006-10-26T20:22:00.000-05:00

Genesis 1:1-4 is a description of the Atonement ritual. It can be compared to Jesus' life and his death on the Cross.

Some presuppositions:
1. Collective murder and the group unity that occurs after it is culturally creative.

2. Atonement rituals and sacrifices are ritual reenactments of the original collective murder. The rituals are renewing of the bonds of creation.

3. Jesus' death was a collective murder.

4. Jesus' life and death was the fulfillment of the Great Atonement Ritual.

Let's get back to Genesis. I've posited that Genesis 1:1 should read something like "With Wisdom God created the heaven and the earth" or "In the beginning of Wisdom, God created the heaven and the earth."

The Aramaic translation (Targum) of Genesis translates Genesis 1:14 this way,

From the beginning with wisdom the Memra of the Lord created and perfected the heavens and the earth. And the earth was waste and unformed, desolate of man and beast, empty of plant cultivation and of trees, and darkness was spread over the face of the abyss; and the spirit of mercy from before the Lord was blowing over the surface of the waters.

Scholars haven't been able to define the term "Memra". Here's someone else's english translation of the Genesis Targum,

1. As the beginning, the Son of God creates the heavens and the earth.*

The first word in Genesis is Be'reasheet. It is a compound word the Be' means "with" and raesheet means "a first wisdom". Wisdom in the Bible is not just intelligence, it is a personification. I'm not quite ready to say that Jesus equals Wisdom. Let's look at some texts from the Bible.

Proverbs 8:22-30:

22The LORD possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. 23I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. 24When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. 25 Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth: 26While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. 27When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: 28When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep: 29When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth: 30Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him;

Jeremiah 10:12

2He hath made the earth by his power, he hath established the world by his wisdom, and hath stretched out the heavens by his discretion.

Psalm 33:6-7:

6By the word of the LORD were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. 7He gathereth the waters of the sea together as an heap: he layeth up the depth in storehouses.

Psalm 104:24;

24O LORD, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.

John 1:1-5:

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2The same was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4In him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.

Jesus was at the beginning of the world, the lamb slain since the foundation of the world. The world was created through Jesus. Jesus was the method of creation.

Creation and Atonement

2006-10-18T20:22:00.000-05:00

Genesis begins like this, "With Wisdom God created the heavens and the earth, the earth had become formless and void and darkness covered the abyss and the spirit of God moved over the waters. Then God said 'Let Him be light, and He was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness."

My hypothesis is that Genesis 1:1-4 should be translated something similar to this. So I've narrowed the focus, but there is a lot there to unravel and decipher. Tremendous symbolism that needs to be discovered. There's a second part of my hypothesis and that is that these verses are related to the Great Day of Atonement and Jesus Christ. That in fact what these verses are describing is the atonement ritual. Method: to find verses throughout the Old and New Testaments, rabbinical writings and any other writings that will illuminate this text. I'm sure I'll need to make quite extensive use of the works of Rene Girard and Margaret Barker. I've discussed and researched this previously, but this time I'll try to work at it till I get the last drop of meaning out of it. We have some verses and things to talk about for next time, just need to get organized.

Please discuss or cite possibly relevant verses.

Atonement Ritual in Joshua 7 with Implications for Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory

2006-10-10T20:12:00.000-05:00

The defeat of Jericho was a tremendous victory. Joshua took Rahab, the prostitute, out of the city, but everything else was to be destroyed. Everything was to be destroyed, babies, unborn babies, children, young children, women and men, all property, but Joshua spared the prostitute who had helped the Israelites destroy her own city. Not all the property was destroyed, the silver and gold, and the vessels of iron and bronze were brought under Joshua's control.

Joshua was feeling pretty good about himself. He was a proud and violent man. He thought a lot of himself. Joshua in this story is an ideologue. An ideologue devoted to a false ideology.

In Numbers 27:15-21 Moses asks God for a man,

17Which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may bring them in; that the congregation of the LORD be not as sheep which have no shepherd.

And God says,

...at his word shall they go out, and at his word they shall come in, both he, and all the children of Israel with him, even all the congregation.

James Alison says,

A passage I particularly like is John 10, in which Jesus proclaims that he is the door of the sheep. First he tells his listeners that a good shepherd is one who watches over his sheep and leads them to and from pasture; they hear his voice and follow him.

A good shepherd will watch over his sheep. Mr. Alison continues,

Suddenly Jesus' image acquires a significant new vibrancy: the pasture which he leads his sheep to and from, going in before them and coming out again, is not the usual pasture, but a "pasture" with a one-way entrance: the gate to the abbattoir. Other sacrificers take the sheep without entering through the gate; robbers and thieves, they are not prepared to carry out the sacrificial lynching themselves, but pick off sheep for sacrifice from a safe distance. When they hear the wrath of the lynch mob coming close, they run away. But the Good Shepherd is happy to go through the gate, occupying the space of the sacrificial lynching for his sheep, who thereafter know that it is not a trap; they will always be able to hear his voice and follow him in and out.

Joshua in his pride and haughtiness believes that Ai will be easy for him to conquer. The reports from the spies say the city is small. With apparent prompting from the spies Joshua decides only a small number of people need toil at Ai, while the rest can stay back in the Israelite camp and continue the celebration of the victory at Jericho. Joshua declares that the good times and partying will continue, only the lowly need to toil and risk their lives at Ai. So Joshua sends the lowly, the people who don't quite fit in, to venture through the sacrificial machinery at Ai. Joshua the shepherd of Israelites declares that the people he is sending out the toil through the sacrificial machinery at Ai are not worth his attention. He doesn't care about them, he is too good to go out with them. He's still enjoying the victory at Jericho with his friends. Can't interrupt his partying with Rahab and all the gold and silver he's collected to go out and risk his life with the unpleasant lower classes.

The Israelites were defeated at Ai. They fled and thirty-six men were killed. "The hearts of the people melted and turned to water." They showed as much interest in taking Ai as Joshua did. If Joshua was going to sit back and party, why should they risk life and limb to take Ai. Joshua is just going to take all the gold anyway.

After the defeat Joshua gets all melodramatic like a typical scapegoater. The defeat couldn't possibly be his fault. He's a slick politician, victories belong to him, defeats belong to the people and the scapegoats. The manifest destiny ideologue asks God/tells the people resentfully "Why have you brought this people across the Jordan at all, to hand us over to the Amorites so as to destroy us?" He can't admit that the defeat at Ai was a leadership failure. He questions the people's courage and terrorizes them with the idea that the Amorites will come and slaughter them and their children.

People are angry at Joshua. They resent Joshua. Their relatives have been killed because of Joshua's lack of leadership. There may be actual violence occurring between the Joshua and anti-Joshua partisans. The bonds of the Israelite community are dissolving. The covenant held all things together. Joshua was man responsible for holding the people together. To lead them all out and to lead them all back. Joshua has broken the covenant, people have been killed. The whole community is on the verge of self-destruction. They don't love Yahweh, the people need a scapegoat to renew the covenant. Joshua is a substitute for the entire community. It's either his death or the death of the community. Joshua realizes this. The community at this point is under the wrath of god. Joshua is refusing to provide himself as a scapegoat.

Joshua realizes that all you need is one person to be a substitute for the whole community. To absorb the wrath that is beginning to boil in the people. So in a highly ritualized drama, Joshua parades the entire community before him, by allowing the people to receive a "not guilty" from him he absorbs their sin and takes it away. Family after family parades before Joshua, he is absorbing their sin, freeing them from the consequences of their own wrath. It doesn't matter if Achan actually had loot or not, he is a scapegoat. Then finally Achan is chosen. The people have never liked Achan, some say he was a criminal, or just didn't like his unpleasant personality. After the parade of families Joshua now has absorbed and possesses in his person all the sins of the Israelites. The second Joshua, Jesus, at this point refused to lay all sin on someone elses head. This Joshua finds a surrogate victim in Achan. Joshua is a substitute for the entire community, Achan is a substitute for Joshua. Joshua is the high priest, Achan is the lamb. Joshua places the sins of the community onto the head of Achan. Achan whether he likes it or not has become the servant of the lord. The bonds of the community are now his responsibility. He will literally unite and draw all the Israelites to him. He is the scapegoat. He takes their sins away. They can focus their hatred on Achan instead of each other. They will all become friends again. Joshua now has provided a scapegoat for the community. All the responsibility for defeat has been placed on Achan, the rest of the people have received a big "not guilty".

The Israelites go on to take Ai with a much larger force than the first time. This time Joshua made sure to lead the way.

Achan is a Scapegoat

2006-10-09T21:00:00.000-05:00

I don't understand how one can defend and justify the murder/lynching of Achan. Achan was a scapegoat. Achan was killed for the sins/shortcomings of Joshua. It defies understanding how people can believe that Achan by allegedly hoarding plunder can have brought about the defeat at Ai. It is superstition to believe that Achan somehow caused the defeat at Ai.

It's funny that immediately after the brutal lynching and homicide of Achan and his family that Joshua lifts the ban. (Joshua 8:2 and 8:27)

The atonement ritual in Joshua 7 only needed to identify one victim, that is why they drew lots. Why didn't Joshua just look for the ban? Everybody had the ban. Joshua needed someone to take his place in the atonement ritual and this someone was Achan. Joshua knew Achan would make the perfect scapegoat. Achan wasn't liked, the people resented him. If Achan was chosen, no one would defend him.

The story of Achan is a story about lynch mob murder. Achan is the hero of the story. He takes the sins of the people upon himself and bears them away. Like the servant in Isaiah 53, he is the bond of the community. His death and destruction holds the community to together. Achan is the atonement sacrifice. He could point the finger at all the others who have hoarded plunder. He could have pointed fingers at Joshua, who is the true villain in this story. Joshua's pride and hubris was what actually caused the defeat at Ai.

Achan by accepting death and bearing the sins of his accusers displays the love of God. Achan is similar to the servant, he has poured his soul out as a sin offering for Joshua and the people of Israel. Upon Achan was the chastisement that made the people whole. The people laid all their frustrations and sins upon Achan. The people healed themselves by throwing stones at Achan. By collectively stoning Achan the people stopped fighting amongst themselves and united around the shared murder of Achan. The people became good, while they made Achan into evil. Achan apparently accepted this, in similar fashion as the servant and subsequently Jesus did.

To believe that Achan caused the defeat at Ai is to believe in a pagan god. It is to believe in a god similar to the Greek god Dionysus. It is to believe in a god that takes great joy in murder and hatred. It is to believe in a god that only hates certain sins, and a god that makes the innocent pay for the sins of the strong and the many. Achan is innocent of causing the defeat at Ai. It is quite ludicrous to argue that Achan had anything, at all, to do with the defeat atAi. Achan is a classic scapegoat. Achan was a human sacrifice.

We must remember that Yahweh is Jesus. Jesus died in a similar fashion to the way Achan died. Joshua was not a true leader/king. Jesus/Yahweh would not have murdered Achan. Jesus/Yahweh was standing beside Achan while he was being murdered by an angry, vengeful and sin-filled mob.
Jesus/Yahweh is light/life and in Him is no darkness/death at all. Jesus bears the consequence of our sin. The tough thing is that he asks us to bear the sin and consequences of the sin for others. Jesus is love. He doesn't want to kill you. He doesn't want you to kill yourself, but if you don't want to love your neighbor this is what will happen. Your sin has consequence. Sin has its own consequences. Sin is its own punishment. God's wrath is the giving up of people to the consequences of their own sins.

Why can't we love and bear the sin of our neighbor? Why do we keep looking for an Achan or a Jesus to murder.

Decapitation and Doubles

2006-10-05T20:29:00.000-05:00

Let me reference my previous post re Iraq and the doubling that has gone on there. Brendan O'Neill wrote Iraq: the world's first Suicide State.

This quote from O'Neill deserves my continuing attention,

So, many insurgent groups film their members blowing themselves up and post the footage on the web; sometimes these are sophisticated operations, involving more than one camera angle and half-decent post-production values. They have also filmed themselves beheading Western hostages for the cameras. Indeed, most insurgent attacks, whether filmed by them or not, seem designed to create a media spectacle.

My thesis, I think, is something like this. That the suicide bombers are our degraded doubles.

1. The bombers film themselves. The war was a media event. The war had no logical aim. It was a mass-media atonement ritual. Mr. O'Neill says the "insurgent groups film their members blowing themselves up and post the footage on the web." Our side filmed the blowing up of Iraqis and now the insurgents film the blowing up of Iraqis. "Shock and Awe" had no military purpose besides making the people in America feel better about themselves. The architects of the war knew that war is nothing but atrocity and murder. There is no meaning to it. They were fighting a propaganda war, against whom we have yet to see. Everything is media and propaganda-driven. It was all just one big show. Parade the victim around and then ceremonially do away with him.

2. Another thing that came to my attention, I thought was also indicative of doubling. At the beginning of the war there was much talk of decapitation strikes, which were nothing more than an elaborate fireworks show with a lot of death and destruction of innocents. It was all done for the media of course. We do our decapitation strikes, they do their literal beheadings.

I hope I'm beginning to make myself clear. What is going on in Iraq right now is a situation or instance of doubling. We forced ourselves on the Iraqi people as their model. They have taken us as their model. They're doing their best to copy our original war, the random/meaningless destruction, the playing to the media, etc.

I'm trying to do more research into this anti-Christian model that has taken over America. This idea that violence and revenge is right, moral and even Christian. It is deeply evil, and there's a deep psychologist basis to it that will take sometime to get into.

Iraq and the Demoniac in the Tombs

2006-10-01T20:26:00.000-05:00

I was reading this article, Iraq: the world's first Suicide State. Some quotes from Mr. O'Neill's article:

"Yet the violence in postwar Iraq is more peculiar and barbaric than any of us could have predicted."

"...there is a kind of spectacle of death, a relentless and pointless bombing and burning of men, women and children by faceless, nameless killers.

"It is striking, for example, that the bombers seem always to lash out against Iraqi civilians..."

"There seems to be no political agenda at all, or certainly none that has been articulated."

Another ‘perplexing’ feature of the Iraqi insurgency is that it seems more interested in creating media images than winning real grassroots support for its agenda (whatever that might be). As the NYT says, ‘The insurgents are showing little interest in winning hearts and minds among the majority of Iraqis’, instead focusing their efforts on creating ‘images of chaos’ (9). So, many insurgent groups film their members blowing themselves up and post the footage on the web; sometimes these are sophisticated operations, involving more than one camera angle and half-decent post-production values. They have also filmed themselves beheading Western hostages for the cameras. Indeed, most insurgent attacks, whether filmed by them or not, seem designed to create a media spectacle.

He concludes by calling this a "...'perplexing’ violent movement...". The above quotes are very perceptive. I'm going to allege that what is happening in Iraq is not so perplexing. It is a reflection or mirror image of what we did to the Iraqi people. Everything above can also be said about the American invasion. From the pointless bombing, burning and mutilation of Iraqi civilians to the obsession with creating media images, we're dealing with two manifestations of the same phenomena. The Iraqi's are reenacting or imitating what we already did to them.

All this brings to mind the story of the Gerasene Demoniac. Paul Neuchterlein of the Girardian Lectionary says, "The story of the Gerasene demoniac is a classic illustration of Girardian interdividual psychology, namely, that our psyches are functions of the Other." The Iraqis are reenacting, against themselves, our previous persecution and war.

From the Girardian Lectionary (about a 1/4 of the way down the page), is Rene Girard's interpretation of the story. Iraq is a scapegoat similar to the Gerasene demoniac. Girard says, "As if he is trying to avoid being expelled and stoned in reality, the possessed brings about his own expulsion and stoning; he provides a spectacular mime of all the stages of punishment that Middle Eastern societies inflict on criminals whom they consider completely defiled and irredeemable."

The violence of the Gerasenes is hardly reassuring for the possessed. Reciprocally, the violence of the possessed disturbs the Gerasenes. As always, each one tries to end violence with a violence that should be definitive but instead perpetuates the circularity of the process. A symmetry can be seen in all these extremes, the self-laceration and the running among the tombs on the one hand, the grandiloquent chains on the other. There is a sort of conspiracy between the victim and his torturers to keep the balance in the game because it is obviously necessary to keep the balance of the Gerasene community. (The Scapegoat, pp. 170-171)

The Demoniac enacts against himself what the community wishes to do. He lives among the dead and beats himself with stones. So he does the work of the community. This self-destructive behaviour is brought about by the community. The community has made him evil, so that they can be good and happy and sane.

Robert Hamerton-Kelly states:

The demoniac is a classic scapegoat figure. He dwells among the tombs and wanders the mountainsides wounding himself and howling. No chains can bind and no man subdue him. He is possessed by a legion of demons, and legion is the mob of his persecutors. He carries his persecutors inside himself in the classic mode of the victim who internalizes his tormentors. He even mimes the lapidation by which he was driven out, compulsively belaboring himself with stones and crying his own rejection. He imitates his persecutors to the extent that he becomes his own executioner in the mode of self-estrangement characteristic of the mimetic crisis. The legion of demons is, therefore, the lynch mob.

Iraq is enacting what we did to them. Everything I quoted above from Mr. O'Neill can equally be said about the the current situation in Iraqi and the initial American war. The above quote from Hamerton-Kelly is perfect. Substitute Iraq for the Demoniac. This is what is happening in Iraq right now. What is happening in Iraq right now is the reenactment of our initial brutalization and degradation of the Iraqi people. We arbitrarily killed their civilians, now they do the same. We have possessed them.

Moving to the end of the Gerasene demoniac story Girard states:

But in these cases it is not the scapegoat who goes over the cliff, neither is it a single victim nor a small number of victims, but a whole crowd of demons, two thousand swine possessed by demons. Normal relationships are reversed. The crowd should remain on top of the cliff and the victim fall over; instead, in this case, the crowd plunges and the victim is saved.
The miracle of Gerasa reverses the universal schema of violence fundamental to all societies of the world. The inversion appears in certain myths but not with the same characters; it always ends in the restoration of the system that had been destroyed or in the establishment of a new system. In this case the result is quite different. The drowning of the swine has a definitive character; it is an event without a future, except for the person cured by the miracle. This text suggests a difference not of degree but of nature between Jesus’ miracle and the usual healings....

Jesus expels the demons, which are the lynch mob, from the Demoniac.

Girard goes on,

The demons are in the image of the human group; they are the imago of this group because they are its imitatio. Like the society of the Gerasenes at the end of our text, the society of demons at the beginning possesses a structure, a kind of organization; it is the unity of the multiple: “My name is Legion; for there are many of us.” Just as one voice is raised at the end to speak in the name of all the Gerasenes, one voice is raised at the beginning to speak in the name of all the demons. These two voices say the same thing. Since all coexistence between Jesus and the demons is impossible, to beg him not to chase away the demons, when one is a demon is the same as begging him to depart, if one is from Gerasa. (pp. 179-180, 181-182)

It should be said that Jesus doesn't send the demons/swine over the cliff, they run off the cliff of their own accord. The Gerasenes know that Jesus is a threat to the stability of their society, he has taken away their scapegoat. If he is now sane, what are they.

Hamerton-Kelly states:

The demons recognize Jesus as their nemesis and try to persuade him not to expel them from the system of violence altogether, but merely to transfer them from one location to another. To do this would be to manage violence by means of violence within the closed sacrificial system. Jesus, however, removes them altogether by sending them into the swine, which, contrary to the demons'' expectation, rush into the lake and drown. The herd of two thousand swine is an eloquent symbol of the mob in pursuit of a victim. The herd's drowning means that violence ceases when the mob disappears. The order of expectation is reversed and instead of the victim going over the cliff the mob goes over!

Jesus is the enemy of the crowd. He refuses to provide the mob with another victim. Deprived of a scapegoat the mob destroys itself. This is the wrath of god. The mob not being provided with a scapegoat as a substitute for themselves, will destroy itself. This is the wrath of God. Jesus has taken away their scapegoat. God doesn't need to destroy them for their sins, they will destroy themselves. They are deprived of a scapegoat to place their violence and sins upon.

The Gerasenes ask Jesus to leave. Have we as Americans in our rush to make Iraq a scapegoat asked Jesus to leave?

Achan

2006-09-30T20:21:00.000-05:00

I've previously discussed Achan here, here, and here. The passage was also recently discussed at Grow Mercy.

The standard conservative/literal reading of Joshua 7 is that Achan caused the defeat at Ai and that it was right and moral for Achan to be brutally killed with stones and fire.

Of course the 21st century mind sees no connection between Achan allegedly taking some spoils from Jericho and the defeat at Ai.

Achan is a precursor or an anticipation of the Christ figure. He is a man innocent of the crime which he is accused. He did not cause the defeat at Ai. I gotta tell you I don't trust any stories that come from lynch mobs. This story is being told by a lynch mob. Achan's confession may be like the confessions in Soviet show trials. This is a story about the formation of group unanimity and renewing the bonds of the group with a blood sacrifice.

Achan was murdered. Achan was viciously killed by a lynch mob. Regardless of how the so-called literalists want us to understand this text, God was on the side of Achan and not the lynch mob.

Joshua was supposed to be a "Shepherd". He was not a good "Shepherd. Jesus was a good shepherd, he didn't lose any of His sheep. In this story Joshua makes a human sacrifice of one of his sheep. Achan is sacrificed for group unity. Achan is sacrificed in Joshua's place. Jesus is the new Joshua. Jesus doesn't kill any of his sheep to save Himself.

After the defeat at Ai the group was on the verge of disintegration. Joshua knew that because as the leader he would sooner or later himself be sacrificed to restore group unity. Joshua wasn't a good shepherd. He knew that someone had to die, and it wasn't going to be him. He needed a scapegoat. Achan had all the signs of a scapegoat. Achan was not a man well-liked by the people. A sinner and hardened criminal. He didn't have friends. If Joshua pointed the finger at Achan, no one would come to his defense. It may have been a long time that people had been wishing for Achan's death. Joshua knew it was either him or Achan.

Numbers 27:15-21 would lead one to believe that the cause of the defeat at Ai was that Joshua did not lead his people into battle. In this section God commands Joshua to march at the head of the army. Now I think you could make a pretty good case that Joshua was in fact responsible for the defeat at Ai. Joshua was supposed to lead the army into battle, to "go out before them".
From the Legends of the Jews:

"He, however shall be a man 'which may go out before them,' who, unlike the kings of the heathens, that send their legions to war but themselves remain at home, shall himself lead Israel to war. But he shall also be at man 'which may come in before them;' may it be granted him to see the number of those returning from war no less than that of those going into war. "O Lord of the world!" continued Moses, "Thou hast led Israel out of Egypt, not to punish them for their sins, but to forgive them, and thou has not led them out of Egypt that they may be without leaders, but that they may indeed have leaders..."

Joshua is not the good shepherd, not only has he lost sheep, but he has intentionally sacrificed one. Did he stay at home out of pride and hubris?

Achan, if we believe what the text says, has realized that he is the lamb that will be sacrificed for group unity. He doesn't point the finger at others, he takes Joshua's sins and the community's sins upon himself and the community is cleansed and renewed by the death of Achan. Achan removes the sin of the community. The community has united around the dead and brutalized body of Achan. This story has many similarities with Isaiah 53. The Achan story is a real-life atonement event. Stories like Achan's are what underlie the Atonement ritual. Stories similar to this underlie the Gospels and what Jesus is doing. Jesus is uniting humanity around His broken body. He allows His body to be broken so that others won't have to be.

Saved from Sacrifice

2006-09-04T15:36:00.000-05:00

S. Mark Heim has a new book out entitled Saved From Sacrifice, I haven't read it yet but it discusses Rene Girard and atonement theology.

Previously in the Christian Century, "Visible Victim: Christ's death to end sacrifice."
Part One
Part Two

James Alison's New Book

2006-08-30T11:46:00.000-05:00

James Alison has a new book coming out, Undergoing God: Dispatches from the Scene of a Break-In.

Isaiah 53:4 and Penal Substitutionary Atonement

2006-08-29T20:21:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since my last post, I've been doing research for a novel I hope to someday write. I know, I have weird hobbies, I spend my time going back and forth between amateur theologian and amateur, aspiring novelist, but it keeps me busy.

I've also been reading a new blog, The Rebel God, Derek Flood has been doing a pretty good job struggling with the atonement.

Now on to today's brief observation.

Matthew 8:16-17 quotes from Isaiah 53:4

16When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick:
17That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.

Penal substitutionary atonement states that God the Father laid the sins on Jesus, but I think what the Gospel of Matthew is saying here in it's quotation of Isaiah 53:4 contradicts this. The people brought their sicknesses, sins and infirmities to Jesus and Jesus took them and absorbed them. He bore/forgave their sins. God the father doesn't seem involved with any kind of laying on of sins here.

Luke 5:21 says:
21And the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone?

If penal substitution is the law, how can sins be forgiven before the penalty has been paid. How can Jesus forgive sins anyway, if it is God the Father who needs to be paid?

Jesus removed ritual impurites from the people. He restored the outcasts to the community. The cleansing of lepers, and the bleeding woman are examples. As Margaret Barker says, "the miracles were not general acts of healing; Jesus did not mend broken bones. The miracles all have a ritual significance and present Jesus as the restoring high priest. Paul presents the same ideas in a different way; the work of Christ brings sinners back into the community (he uses the term 'justification') and then no supernatural powers are ever again able to separate them and cut them off."

Again you must read Margaret Barker's essay on the atonement. She writes:

Third, there is additional information about the scapegoat in the Mishnah; people pulled out the goat’s hair as it was led away (m.Yoma 6.4). In the Epistle of Barnabas42 there is a quotation from an unknown source about the scapegoat: ‘Spit on it, all of you, thrust your goads into it, wreathe its head with scarlet wool and let it be driven into the desert’ (Barn.7). The goat suffered the fate of the Servant: ‘I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard. I hid not my face from shame and spitting (Isa.50.6); and ‘He was pierced for our transgressions’ (Isa.53.5). Barnabas continues: ‘When they see him (Jesus) coming on the Day, they are going to be struck with terror at the manifest parallel
between him and the goat.’ The reference is to the future coming of the LORD to his people. This is another Servant motif; the recognition of who the Servant is43. Barnabas, too, associates the scapegoat with the Day of the LORD: ‘They shall see him on that Day, clad to the ankles in his red woollen robe, and will say, ‘Is this not he whom we once crucified and mocked and pierced and spat upon?’ (Barn.7).

On Isaiah 53 she writes this:

Second, we see that Isaiah 53 could have been inspired by the Day of Atonement ritual. A few points must suffice.
1. ‘He shall startle many nations’ (Isai.52.15); yazzeh, the apparently untranslatable verb means ‘sprinkle’ in the atonement ritual (Lev.16.19). The Servant figure does not ‘startle’ many peoples; the original Hebrew says he ‘sprinkles’36.
2. The Servant ‘carries’ the people’s sicknesses or weaknesses (Isa.53.4).
3. The Servant has been wounded for their transgressions. Wounded, hll, is a word which carries both the meanings required by Mary Douglas’s theory of atonement, viz. to pierce or to defile.
4. ‘Upon him was the chastisement that made us whole’ (Isa.53.5b) can also be translated ‘The covenant bond of our peace was his responsibility’37. ‘With his stripes, hbrt, 38we are healed’ would then become ‘By his joining us together we are healed’, forming a parallel to mwsr, covenant bond. The primary meaning of hbr is to unite, join together.
5. The Servant pours out his soul/life as a sin offering, `sm (Isa.53.19). The `sm is,
according to Milgrom, the sacrifice which redresses the m`l, which is either sacrilege
against holy things or violation of the covenant.39 The soul/life was in the blood of the sacrifice, hence it was poured out.
All this suggests that the Servant figure was modelled on the one who performed the
atonement rites in the first temple40. This figure appears in Enoch’s Similitudes in his heavenly aspect as the Man, the Anointed, the Chosen One. In the ritual of the second temple, the figure became two goats: one bearing the sins away and the life/blood of the other being taken into the holy of holies where the ark, the throne had been41.

In pagan/primitive religion the people always believed that the god/person they just lynched restored peace and unity to the community through his beneficence and foreknowledge. It was his plan to be killed by the lynch mob so that the community could be united. This is how the lynch mob saw things. It wasn't the person that was brutally murdered that united them, it was their own collective violence directed toward the scapegoat.

I think it was Nietzsche that said Christianity is structurally the same as pagan religion. In Christianity the lynchers hear the cock crow. Jesus is not turned into a minor deity because people realize what they have done. They killed him, they were responsible for His death. Jesus poured his blood and soul out to them. He becomes the God of Love and Forgiveness who has bore/forgave their sins. So unlike pagan religions, where the people have to constantly reenact the original lynching by finding new scapegoats, Christians must follow Jesus and bear/forgive the sins of others and no longer give into violence and make more scapegoats.

Mark 8:22-26 and Trees of Righteousness

2006-08-13T21:02:00.000-05:00

Mark 8:22-26 is the story of Jesus healing the blind man at Bethsaida.

Jesus comes to Bethsaida and the people bring a blind man to him. Jesus spits on his eyes and puts his hands upon him. Spit was apparently defiling in Judaism. Then the blind man looks up and sees "men as trees, walking". This refers to Isaiah 61:3. Jesus reads from Isaiah 61 in Luke 4:16-21, this reading inaugurates the 10th and final Jubilee. So the blind man sees men walking around as righteous, glorifying the Lord, rebuilding old wastes, raising up former desolations, repairing the waste cities and the desolations of many generations (Isaiah 61:4). In Enoch the opening of blind eyes is linked to the overthrow of evil and releasing from bondage, both Jubilee themes. Luke 4:18 mentions recovery of sight to the blind as part of Jubilee. In Luke Jesus quotes from the Septuagint text of Isaiah 61 (the definition of the relevant Greek word) not our Old Testament/masoretic text if I'm reading everything correctly.

So basically all I really want to say is that the trees that are walking around refer to Isaiah 61:3 and this is all related to the Jubilee which Jesus has inaugurated and will be fulfilled in His renewing of the convenant at the Cross.

Yahweh, Jesus, Isaiah 53 and Penal Substitutionary Atonement

2006-07-18T19:07:00.000-05:00

I don't have time to actually do research and then write an article or an appropriately organized and coherent blog post, so what will follow below are notes to a hypothetical article. I'll be doing research while I'm writing this, it's like real-time, I don't know, real-time something. Well, let's begin.

Penal Substitutionary Atonement theory uses Isaiah 53 as evidence of God wounding/killing the Son for our sins. The specific verses include Isaiah 53:6-7 and Isaiah 53:10.

Thesis:
Isaiah 53:6-7 and Isaiah 53:10 do not support the theory of Penal Substitutionary Atonement.

There are two questions I want to explore. Both lines of thought are inspired by Rene Girard's mimetic theory and Margaret Barker's research into First Temple symbolism.

1. The New Testament declares that Jesus is Yahweh. Yahweh is the Son of God. Jesus is Yahweh. Penal Substitution Atonement theory (hereafter abbreviated, PSAT) doesn't seem to take this into account when it uses these verses as evidence and support.

Philippians 2:9-11 - God gives Jesus a name. What is that name? Is it the tetragrammaton YHWH? 2:11 says that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the God the Father. "Lord is equivalent to "Yahweh".

Margaret Barker thoroughly lays out all the evidence in her book "The Great Angel", a portion of which may be found here. You'll have to find the book for the chapters on the New Testament and the first Christians.

So the question right now, for PSAT, is how does Yahweh, not God the Father, lay all sin on Himself. I of course believe that in fact it is not God the Father or Yahweh placing all sin on anybody, rather it is the people who have placed their sins onto the Servant. Eucharistic theology. Yahweh pouring His blood out to the people. Think last supper.

Isaiah 52:15 says the servant will sprinkle many nations. His blood will be sprinkled on many nations.

Margaret Barker's Atonement: The Rite of Healing (pdf)

According to Barker Isaiah 53:5 can be translated "The covenant bond of our peace was his responsibility".

Also, "With his stripes, hbrt, we are healed' would then become 'By his joining us together we are healed', forming a parallel to mwsr, covenant bond. The primary meaning of hbr is to unite, join together."

Immediately reading this I think of Girardian mimetic theory. What's the high priest in the gospels say, it is better that one man die than for the whole nation to be destroyed, or something like that. Barker states, "The Servant 'carries' the people's sicknesses or weaknesses." So because the servant is carrying all the negativity of the community, all contagion, all sin and violence, all that's bad, he must be removed. The community is united against the servant. He has restored the community/covenant by his death. People formerly on the fringes are brought back into the community.

Girard says that in the ancient world collective stonings and lynchings really did unite people, so much so that he posits that the foundation of primitive religions can be found in the circle of people around the stoned and lynched victim. Primitive religions, when they found that their societal unity was beginning to disintegrate tried to ritualize and reenact this founding event. They reenacted the founding event, the collective lynching/stoning of a victim, to restore the stability and bonds of the community. This went on till it exhausted itself and another actual, collective stoning/lynching had to take place. Then a new god or religion was born. The sacred awe of ancient crowd, who had previously been undergoing societal disintegration (i.e. actual violence between community members) suddenly, after the collective stoning of the victim found that peace had been restored and the bonds of the community had been restored, sins had been forgiven (i.e. the cycle of revenge had ceased). These ancient people soon discovered that the victim who they thought was evil, who had united them to collectively stone him. He wanted them to stone them, so that they may be united. So this victim was evil, was the cause of violent plague that beset the community. But now, something strange has happened, peace seems to have fallen on the community. People formerly at each other's throats are now smiling at each other, crops which weren't being planted/harvested now are growing and healthy. The violence that previously was destroying the community has left with the victim who was stoned. Things previously not working because of the violence, now are working because people are no longer fighting. The ancients don't perceive that it was their own violence that was causing the society to disintegrate. After everything is renewed, they go back and pinpoint the collective stoning/lynching of the victim as the beginning of the renewal. This victim is turned into a primitive god. The people think the victim was both evil and good. The Greek word pharmakos means both cure and poison. The Greeks threw the pharmakos over the cliff whenever they were suffering a plague (not biological plague, but violent plague). So whenever there is trouble in the community people try to ritualize what brought peace before. They ritually reenact the whole situation that led up to the collective stoning/lynching. This cures the community.

2. James Williams' interpretation of Isaiah 53. From his Bible, Violence and the Sacred (via Girardian Lectionary).

He says, "This song or poem is a kind of antiphonal dialogue between the God of Israel and the people. God speaks in 52:13-15 and 53:11-12, and in my judgment the people speak in 53:1-10."

After discussing who is speaking in each verse , Mr. Williams summarizes,

"Because he poured out his soul [or life, nefesh] to death": this is the key, as I construe the passage. The Servant willingly gave himself for his people. It wasn't God who caused his suffering, it was oppressors. As the divine voice says in an oracle found in chapter 54:
If any one stirs up strife,it is not from me;
whoever stirs up strife with you
shall fall because of you. (54:15)
"Strife" -- the conflict of mimetic rivalry that results in violence -- does not come from God. The two lines seem to indicate strife within the Israelite community (15a) and strife in the form of attacks upon Israel (15b). In my reading I see the Servant as the object of oppression resulting from this strife. He does not intend to become a "sacrifice," and God does not subject him to suffering, although Second Isaiah perceives that the people continue in the ambiguity of the tradition still rooted in the sacrificial cult.

It is the people who oppress the Servant, not God. The Servant is the substitute for the entire community. If the Servant is not destroyed, the community will destroy itself, by its own violence and hatred. The Servant renews the Covenant by shedding his blood. His blood seals the covenant. His expulsion and death holds the people together. Their anger and violence is directed toward him and not each other. He is the substitute for the community. He dies so that they don't have to. Instead of killing each other, he allows the community to unite around him in a collective expulsion. A collective murder. His blood his poured forth. His blood, like in the Day of Atonement ritual, is sprinkled on the community. He carries the community's sins, sicknesses and violence away.

Mr. Williams states:

The Servant of the Lord depicted by the Second Isaiah is a paradigm of the victim whose expulsion is coterminous with his calling. "By oppression and judgment he was taken away . . . he was cut off out of the land of the living." But in this role he stands for the whole, the entire community. From the standpoint of the community whose theology is still rooted in the principle of god's wrath and still has not quite attained a theology of the innocent victim, it appears that this suffering has been imposed by the God of Israel on his servant, yet it is a condition the Servant has accepted voluntarily. It is very ambiguous from the standpoint of the collective voice of the social order, and thus it must always be. The suffering of the innocent victim will always be ambiguous from the standpoint of any society, which always has at the core of its structure a victimization mechanism and its sacrificial outlets. The victimization mechanism may be qualified, and there may be substitutions upon substitutions whose use seems to deny the effectiveness of sacrificial violence. Even if sacrificial violence seems to be a thing of the remote past, nonetheless culture and language are permeated with strong traces of that which brought about hominization in the first place: mimetic desire and rivalry, collective violence, prohibition, and sacrifice.
However, the prophetic author of the Servant poem has insight that transcends the point of view of the collective chorus that comments on the Servant and his work. He sees that it is not the will of God to bruise him, but it is the will of God to use him -- to speak through the excluded one, who suffers on behalf of others. In understanding his suffering, in standing with him and not with the persecutors, those who are taught by him begin to transform the structures of sacred violence.

One final thing to stick in here at the end.

Barker states that Isaiah 53:1 could be translated, "To whom has the offspring/seed of the Lord been revealed". Jesus is the root and offspring of David (Revelation 22:16)

Barker says that the "'Root of Jesse' is a triumphant figure, the banner to which all nations will be drawn on the day when Israel is gathered together again".

Jesus allows Himself to be killed by the mob, and instead of violent retribution He distributes His body and blood in an act of forgiveness, so that we may turn from our sin and hatred of our neighbor. In accepting the body and blood we realize what we have done. Instead of killing others to bring peace we must now accept the forgiveness and the broken body and blood of Jesus. Instead of unity found around the bodies of our murdered victims, we must find unity around the broken body and blood of Jesus. Eucharistic Atonement? Jesus/Yahweh coming from the Temple/Heaven with His blood to forgive us and unite us in love around Him. Primitive religions found their communion around their collectively stoned victim, Christians should find their unity around the broken body of Jesus. We have killed the Author of Life. We must stop murdering people.

Melchizedek, Jesus and Jubilee

2006-07-15T21:10:00.000-05:00

In Luke 4:15-22 Jesus quotes a section from the Book of Isaiah.

18The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
19To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

I'm still using Margaret Barker's "The Time is Fulfilled; Jesus and the Jubilee" (pdf).
That section is from her book the Great High Priest.

Barker says that the Qumran Melchizedek text refers many times "to the Jubilee oracle in Isaiah 61: '...the Lord God has anointed me...to proclaim liberty to the captives'"

Hebrews 7 makes a connection between Melchizedek and Jesus.

Barker states:

Daniel’s seventy weeks of years were reckoned from this time ‘when the word went forth to restore and rebuild Jerusalem’ (Dan.9.25), and the seventy weeks of years were to end when transgression, sin and iniquity were finally removed and Jerusalem was destroyed (Dan.9.24,26). The Day of Atonement was also the Day of the LORD, the Day of Judgement13. The description indicates a final Day of Atonement when prophecy and visions are fulfilled and the Anointed One appears.
The seventy weeks of years, 490 years, were ten Jubilees, and the alternative way of reckoning this period was as ten Jubilees. Jewish tradition remembered that the 490 years ended in 68CE; calculation from the second temple Jubilee sequence beginning in 424BCE gives 66CE. A two year discrepancy is hardly significant in the light of what this implies, namely that the tenth Jubilee began in 17/19 CE. In other words, tenth Jubilee fervour and expectations were the context for the ministry of Jesus.

The Qumran Melchizedek text describes the events of the tenth Jubilee.
Isaiah 52:7 is another important Melchizedek and Jubilee text. In this tenth Jubilee there was going to be a final day of Atonement.

In Luke's gospel Jesus claimed to have inaugurated the final Jubilee. Isaiah 61 was also central to the Melchizedek text. Barker states:

The first miracle was an exorcism (Mark 1.21-26), setting one of his own people free from the power of Belial. He spoke of a woman bound by Satan and released her (Luke 13.16), of slaves to sin whom the Son could release (John 9.31-38). He forgave sins and illustrated his teaching with a parable of two debtors whose debts were cancelled (Luke 7. 41-48). The healing miracles restored to the community people who would have been excluded as ritually unfit: the disabled, the lepers, a woman who was bleeding. This was the great ingathering of the Jubilee. Jesus spoke of those who would inherit the earth (Mat.5.5) and at the Last Supper, he spoke of the New Covenant and of his blood poured out for the remission of sins (aphesis, the Jubilee word, Mat.26.28).

In the "Risen Lord" Barker states, "The Qumran Melchizedek text shows that there were some in first-century Palestine expecting a divine high priest at the end of time bringing the day of the Lord which was also the great day of Atonement."

Psalm 110, the Melchizedek Psalm, is the the most frequently used text in the New Testament.

Jesus as Melchizedek?

Melchizedek, Jubilee and Jesus.

Barker again: "Melchizedek was central to the old royal court...and that this priesthood operated in the mythology of the sons of Elyon and the triumph of the royal son of God in Jerusalem."

Barker again: "In the Elyon tradition, Melchizedek was one aspect of the role of the king in his embodiment of the Spirit of Yahweh, the Holy One of Israel."

Melchizedek was a priest of El Elyon.

Were the ancient kings both sons of David and sons of Elyon? Was this how Jesus was understood?

Jesus inaugurated the Jubilee. Jesus declared the forgiveness of sins and the literal and financial remission of debts. Jubilee and the Day of Atonement restore the covenant. The Jubilee was to bring the lost and disenfranchised back into the fold. It was supposed to restore creation. Heal the wounds in creation.

What does it mean to say that Jesus is the Son of God? Were the ancient and first temple kings known as Sons of God? How did the Day of Atonement renew the covenant? So much material to assimilate. Remember this isn't really an argument, but rather a collection of notes, maybe for some future, hypothetical argument that I'll maybe make. Just trying to lay some groundwork for an understanding of Jesus, the Gospels and the New Testament, by using the Isaiah Servant Songs as a general inspiration and focus.

James Alison, Some Thoughts on the Atonement.
Margaret Barker, Atonement: The Rite of Healing.
Margaret Barker, Beyond the Veil: the High Priestly Origin of the Apocalypses

Introductory Notes to the Isaiah Servant Songs and the Jubilee

2006-07-15T15:18:00.000-05:00

In the comments section of my last post Mr. Randle suggested I do some biblical exegesis. He suggested Isaiah 53:5. So I'll use that verse and the Isaiah Servant Songs as a general inspiration and focus. There's a lot of material to go over so don't expect anything like a linear article, it'll just be an outline, notes and comments.

1. In this study I'll be generally following Rene Girard's mimetic theory (summary from Girardian Lectionary) and Margaret Barker's research into first temple symbolism.

2. Isaiah and Jubilee

Leviticus 25 deals with the jubilee system. A ram's horn was used as a trumpet to announce the year of jubilee. The jubilee year came at the end of the cycle of Sabbatical years. Leviticus 25 states it's the 50th year, but others believe it may have been the 49th. In this year liberty was proclaimed to Israelites who had become enslaved to debt and land was restored to families who because of economic need had been forced to sell in the previous 50 years. Most of this is based on Margaret Barker's article "The Time is Fulfilled; Jesus and the Jubilee" (pdf) and the Anchor Bible Dictionary and a Qumran dictionary.

Things I find particularly noteworthy from Barker's article:

A.

The Jubilee, the Sabbath of Sabbaths, was proclaimed on the Day of Atonement (Lev.25.9) and so the custom of Jubilee must be understood in this context. Since atonement was itself a rite which restored the eternal covenant and enabled the whole creation, not just the community of Israel, to be restored to its original state3, the Jubilee was a practical application of the atonement. The key figure in the rite of atonement was the high priest who was the visible presence of the LORD on earth 4, and, just as the LORD had ordered the creation at the beginning, so he recreated it on the Day of Atonement at the New Year. The Jubilee recreated society by restoring people to their own land and by removing the burden of slavery and debt.

"The Jubilee was closely linked to the role of the Servant of the LORD, Isaiah’s depiction of the royal high priest of the first temple."

"Isaiah 61.1-9 is a significant Jubilee passage; someone anointed with the Spirit is to bring good tidings to the poor, comfort the broken hearted and proclaim liberty, deror, to captives."

"Daniel’s seventy weeks of years were reckoned from this time ‘when the word went forth to restore and rebuild Jerusalem’ (Dan.9.25), and the seventy weeks of years were to end when transgression, sin and iniquity were finally removed and Jerusalem was destroyed (Dan.9.24,26). The Day of Atonement was also the Day of the LORD, the Day of Judgement13. The description indicates a final Day of Atonement when prophecy and visions are fulfilled and the Anointed One appears.
The seventy weeks of years, 490 years, were ten Jubilees, and the alternative way of reckoning this period was as ten Jubilees. Jewish tradition remembered that the 490 years ended in 68CE; calculation from the second temple Jubilee sequence beginning in 424BCE gives 66CE. A two year discrepancy is hardly significant in the light of what this implies, namely that the tenth Jubilee began in 17/19 CE. In other words, tenth Jubilee fervour and expectations were the context for the ministry of Jesus."

"The liberty of the Jubilee is interpreted as release from iniquities, the beginning of the atonement which will occur on the Day of Atonement at the end of the tenth Jubilee. The return and the release from iniquity were to happen in the first week, the first seven years, of the tenth Jubilee i.e. approximately 19-26 CE. If Jesus was born in 7/6 BCE15 and was baptised when he was about thirty years old (Luke 3.23), he began his ministry during the crucial first ‘week’ of the tenth Jubilee."

So the themes/subjects I'll be continuing to explore are the Isaiah Servant Songs, the Jubilee, the connection between Jesus and Melchizedek, the Day of Atonement and whatever else I'll find interesting.

Iraq War and Penal Substitutionary Atonement

2006-07-07T21:53:00.000-05:00

It is my prediction that the War on Iraq will finally make Penal Substitutionary Atonement untenable to all but the most strident ideologues.

Jesus was killed by an angry mob.

Iraq War was launched by an illogical, angry mob.

In both cases evidence didn't matter. Evidence wasn't even considered. Paranoia, hatred and violence ruled. It was better for someone else to die, and Iraq's case a lot of somebody elses, than for our self-esteem to take a hit.

Those who wish for death want to be lost in the crowd. They want to be lost in the waters of chaos at the beginning of Genesis. Yahweh emerged from the Temple carrying His blood, killed by the violence of those who inhabit the waters, and Yahweh established dry ground. Jesus was light. We must take responsibility for our own violence. The mob killed Jesus and the mob continues to kill Jesus. If you kill the least of these you kill Jesus. We have killed children in Iraq. How many children must die for American self-esteem?

We have exported our violence to Iraq, and now Iraq is filled with violence. For too long talk-radio and the propaganda of Conservatism has fomented hatred. Hatred of the Liberal, hatred of our neighbors who we resent, and who seem to be always more insidiously powerful.
Hatred, endless hatred and resentment. Behind hatred is the wish to kill and murder. Americans are not allowed to kill each other. Talk radio propaganda has built up hatred in the Conservative soul. They couldn't actually kill Liberals, because well first of all they don't exist, and secondly because if they should find one of these mythical creatures U.S. law prevents murder. A substitute had to be found. This substitute was Iraq. This substitute had to be weak. Iraq was the target because it couldn't fight back and no one would defend her. We could have our way with the people of Iraq. They were designated as evil. It was now Ok to kill them, because they were evil, and we told ourselves that we were at war. Murder, we tell ourselves, is perfectly fine during war. During war we break things and sometimes innocent people and children get killed, and burned alive and dismembered. This was Ok because it was war, and also we wouldn't be suffering the consequences.

It's always fun to gang up on the little guy and kick his ass. It's better his ass than mine. Camarderie with the big and serious people. War is serious business.

The War on Iraq was waged for no reason. Sure Saddam was responsible for a lot bad things, and because Saddam is guilty of bad things this gave us a free pass to commit bad things of our own. Always comparing ourselves to someone else. War propagandists always want us to base our behaviour on the behaviour of same bad and evil guy. Saddam killed his own people, so that makes it OK for us to kill his people too.

Moral Relativism. Conservativism is moral relativism. War is murder. Murder is a sin. We must repent of murder.

God the Father handed Yahweh/Jesus over to us. Instead of following the commandments we murdered the author of life. We always believe the crowd is in the right and the person being killed is in wrong. In Penal Substitutionary Atonement God is no different than Satan. Satan is violent and murderous, but God is violent and murderous to a much greater degree. If there's anything that we respect it is authoritative violence. In Penal Substitutionary Atonement God is the Lynch Mob who authoritatively kills the designated victim/victims.

What do we say? Penal Substitutionary Atonement makes no sense. God handed over the Iraqi people to us, and instead of dealing with them with love and mercy we demand their deaths. Of course, the war propagandists burnt a whole bunch of incense and clouded the whole thing in mystery and told us that we were only killing bad guys and that we were doing a great and noble thing by liberating Iraq. As Christians we know, and the War on Iraq has made perfectly clear, is that we longed for the death of the innocent children, we longed for their fiery deaths, their dismemberment and rape. This is War. War is Hell. Christianity believes in a literal Hell. There's no need to spiritualize it into some long distant future last judgment. People are living in Hell right now. The War on Iraq is Hell. Hell inhabits people who want to kill, who demand sacrifices to whatever god they worship.

Penal substitutionary atonement should have fallen apart after Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the Nazi death camps. Humans are responsible for violence and murder. Humans were perfectly capable all on their own of murdering Jesus. It was a human decision that Jesus must die. Humans are lost in sin. Jesus on the Cross is the Last Judgment. Jesus on the Cross is the Light in Genesis 1:3. Death and blood and resurrection and return from the dead of Jesus create the world.

God is Love. Penal Substitutionary Atonement doesn't understand Love. Love for them can only be understood in terms of inflicting violence on someone. God doesn't scream for blood, humans do.

Iraq was a sacrifice to our god. Two goats. George W. Bush is the High Priest. He places the sins of the community on the head of Iraq and sends them over the cliff in the wilderness. Our soldiers are the second goat who is sacrificed. The soldiers are a substitute for George W. Bush, who is a substitute for us. The blood of our soldiers was supposed to renew our society and heal the wounds of Liberal disintegration.

George W. Bush

2006-07-07T16:20:00.000-05:00

This post over at the Preaching Peace blog got me thinking about our dear leader, George W. Bush.
It brought to mind this quote from his 2002 State of the Union Address:

"If it feels good, do it." Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: "Let's roll."

He is also quoted as saying this:

"If it feels good, do it, and if you've got a problem, blame somebody else," to a culture in which each of us understands we're responsible for the decisions we make in life. I call it the responsibility era.

I don't think we need to mention that these are the words of man who has spent his whole life apparently doing anything that felt the least bit good.

How do I describe it? I have listened quite extensively to the discussions of conservatives on talk radio and blogs. Sexual licentiousness is a dominant or obsessive subject of the discussions. From never ending discussion of homosexuality to Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction. The "responsibility era", what does this mean to a Republican party that consistently preaches that individuals have absolutely no responsibility to the greater community. Apparently the only time when we have claims made upon us by the greater community is when it is time to take someone or some country out back and kill them.

So I think all this sexual licentiousness and economic jealousy/envy inevitably lead us to the scapegoat. George W. Bush realizes this. "Let's Roll" is a call to community. They have designated the victim who will take responsibility for all our misdeeds. It really doesn't matter if they're guilty of anything. The reasons to go brutally murder these people really don't matter, it's just so much smoke and incense. We were in a frenzy. A sexual and economic frenzy. We hated each other. We were tired of competing of the envy and jealousy. Put all the SUV's and boats and vacation homes, the suburban square-footage comparisons, the sexual competition and frustration, put all that behind us. Take my hand brother and let us all go kill the infidel. Glory, Yes, just like our fathers in WWII, in the big one. Saddam is Hitler, we're going to liberate those people, flowers will reign down on us, people will hug us in the streets.

Conservatism is obsessed with the Other. Resentment which is the driving power of Conservatism is obsession with the Other. With the Good-Looking guy down the street, with the Liberal, with the Homosexual, with the rivalrous Woman, always their eye is on someone else. It hurts, this obsession with other people, obtaining their identity from their neighbor or their television. How someone else always seems to be more authentic and more powerful.

We've wanted to kill for a long time, and suddenly a victim is designated, a country who literally cannot fight back. A country who's people it is safe to brutalize and dismember. Of course to us this was a religious ritual. We were the good guys, the allies in this new World War. We wanted to be able to fight these people, these evil-doers without regret. To brutalize them with our big military guns. We didn't want to be nice. This frenzy we worked ourselves into. These people were evil and we were right to "shock and awe" them. To show them our authenticity, our manliness. We were men. American males had doubted this for too long. This "War", or religious ritual, would restore our authenticity, our maleness, our goodness.

In this religious ritual, which was an atonement ritual, we wanted to, or tried to, place all our jealousies, rivalries, hatreds and sins onto the head of the Iraqi people. This didn't work as well as some of us hoped, well because we are a nation based on Christianity and it was so easy to see that Iraq was being scapegoated, for the our own sins.

The War on Iraq was wrong and evil. Tens of thousands of innocent people were killed and brutalized. Innocent people, children and unborn babies were killed, burnt alive, dismembered by our bombs. All for our self-esteem and the illusion of our own goodness. There still among us people who truly believe that these Iraqi children are guilty of the "crimes" that we accused them.

George W. Bush's words were a call for the lynch mob to form. George W. Bush and the Republican party's sole purpose is to blame someone else for our misdeeds.

Infancy Gospel of James

2006-07-06T19:57:00.000-05:00

Infancy Gospel of James. This is all from Margaret Barker.

The Infancy Gospel of James is not easy to date, but Justin in the mid-second century knew that the birth had taken place in a cave, Clement of Alexandria, at the end of the second century, knew that Mary was a virgin after giving birth, and Origen knew that Joseph had been a widower with other children[9] - all details unique to account. A papyrus of the Infancy Gospel of James, dated to the end of the third century, is the oldest known complete gospel text[10]. The Infancy Gospel of James tells how Mary was given to the temple when she was three years old, like the infant Samuel (1 Sam.1.24). The priest received her and sat her on the third step of the altar, and she danced at his feet in the temple. She was fed by an angel, and grew up in the temple until, at the age of twelve and the onset of puberty, she had to leave. A husband was found for her, Joseph, who was a widower with sons. When a new veil was needed for the temple, seven young women were chosen to spin the wool and to weave. Mary was one of them, and while she was spinning, the angel told her that she would give birth to the Son of God Most High. Mary spinning the red wool as the angel speaks to her became the ikon of the Annunciation. The little girl in the temple, dancing before the high priest, is exactly how Wisdom was described in Proverbs 8: playing and dancing before the Creator. Like Wisdom, Mary is depicted in ikons as seated in the holy of holies, being fed by an angel. She left the holy place to give birth to her child, like the woman clothed with the sun appearing through the opened veil of the holy of holies. Whilst she was weaving the new veil, the symbol of incarnation, she was pregnant with her child, and in ikons, she is shown holding her spindle, the ancient symbol of the Great Lady. The Queen of Heaven and her Son were Mary and her Son, and just as Jesus was proclaimed the Lord, the God of Israel, so Mary was depicted as the Great Lady, his Mother.

In the Great High Priest she says the Angel was presumably a Priest. So Mary was chosen to create a new veil for the temple. In the Gospels the flesh of Jesus and the Veil were linked.

Preaching Peace Blog

2006-06-28T21:25:00.000-05:00

You've seen the Preaching Peace website, now check out the Preaching Peace blog.

Jesus is Lord!!!

2006-06-25T20:54:00.000-05:00

Some thoughts. I need to do more research re this. Isaiah 53:10. Yahweh is the Lord. Jesus is the Lord. Yahweh is Jesus. Jesus does not crush Himself.
Using the Studylight.org interlinear I've noticed a couple things. Could Isaiah be translated something like, "Yahweh was moved/pleased/delighted to allow Himself to be crushed and to be wounded." I want to propose that Yahweh, or the High Priest/Servant who represented/was Yahweh was the one being wounded. This lines up with the Gospel account. Isaiah 53:6, seems to say that Yahweh intercedes in our iniquity. Is this why Aaron had to be so careful when performing the atonement rites, or he would be killed? The lamb was a substitute for Aaron, if he didn't perform them correctly, did the people go after Aaron? Iniquity meaning something close to reciprocal violence, the cycle of revenge/violence. As it says somewhere else, without Him interceding no flesh would have been saved. In Isaiah 53, are we witnessing an atonement ritual. Is this what Jesus was enacting? Jesus allowed Himself to be wounded, like the servant, to bear our sins, so that his children may be prolonged/saved. Humans wounded Yahweh in both Isaiah and the Gospels, to deny this I think is to deny the reality of the text. We transfered our sins to Jesus. Jesus allowed Himself to be the recipient of our sins (the whip, the nails, the cross, our hatred). We made Jesus to be sin, and because He loved us he went along with it. It was either accept the transference of our sin to Himself, or Jesus in the end transfering that sin to another scapegoat. Jesus loved us all He could not do that. God desires mercy not sacrifice, this is plainly stated.

Rene Girard's mimetic theory (James Alison and Atonement) and Margaret Barker's work re First Temple/Day of Atonement symbolism can really provide quite a bit of insight into the text of Isaiah 53. Girardian theory and Margaret Barker's works are must reads if you want to understand Christian symbolism.

Is saying that Jesus is Yahweh scandalous?

Bruce Springsteen and Bring 'em Home

2006-06-25T11:37:00.000-05:00

(Via YouTube)

Anthropoetics

2006-06-21T22:18:00.000-05:00

Anthropoetics volume 12, no. 1 is now online. Also of note, Eric Gans and the editorial board of Anthropoetics have a new Generative Anthropology blog, GABlog.

The Wrath of God?

2006-06-21T20:53:00.000-05:00

There's a certain subsection in the blog world that believes that God the Father murdered Jesus. Well they do acknowledge that our sins in some way helped to nail Jesus to the cross, because human sin for some reason got God the Father all riled up, hurt his feelings, insulted his "honor", so mad that demanded payment. He became angry, wrathful, if he wasn't repaid for the damage done to his "honor" he would get all violent on us humans. Throw us all into "hell", and just basically burn his violence out on us. Fortunately for us, a the theory goes, Jesus was there to absorb the wrath of God the Father in our place. Jesus would pay what we couldn't.

Penal substitionary atonement theory is absurd. God is on the verge of freeing us from this oh so theoretical theory. Nagasaki, Hiroshima, the Holocaust and ethnic cleansings throughout the 20th century and into the 21st have profoundly shown us human wrath. A few verses:
1. Mark 13:20
And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect's sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days.
(One thing to note in this verse, "for the chosen/elect" looks like it could be "through the chosen/elect)

2. Matthew 21:41-43

41They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons.
42Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes?
43Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.

(Because they answered in this manner the kingdom of God will be taken away from them. God is not violent he will not destroy them. The stone the builders rejected will become the cornerstone. They don't learn, the want to reject Jesus again. If they would have really learned that killing the prophets was wrong they wouldn't want to kill Jesus. Jesus will not punish them, he will forgive them, but they will not accept his forgiveness. They are stuck in the cycle of violent retribution, all they understand is violence, revenge and murder. Jesus is a scandal, someone who will not answer violence with violence, this is the greatest perversion the world system knows. This is why Jesus is such a scandal to them. After all that God has done for them they still haven't learned that God is not a wrathful God, he will not destroy them.)

3. John 10:1-21
Why do the people call him mad? Is it because he said that He will lead his people through the sheep gate. The sheep going to slaughter. Is Jesus asking us to follow Him to slaughter? We must become as Jesus did, the bonds of the covenant of peace. He is not sending some else through the sheep gate, some substitute through the sacrificial machinery, He will go to the slaughter Himself. God does not want sacrifice, he wants mercy. Humanity demands sacrifice and retribution for sins. Jesus sacrifices Himself to a violent mob. He is not a thief who has come to kill and destroy, He has come so that we may have life. If left to ourselves we will destroy each other in nuclear holocaust, Jesus has substituted Himself for us. God doesn't want to destroy us, He loves us. We want to destroy ourselves. Jesus says destroy me instead of destroying each other. My blood is life, drink, and realize what you have done.

Atonement and Isaiah

2006-06-20T20:22:00.000-05:00

Isaiah 49:6 says:

He says, "It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel;I will also make You a light of the nations, so that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth."

Genesis 1:3 could be translated, "And God said, 'Let Him be Light, and He was Light".

I need to do a little more research, but Isaiah 53 should be translated something like "he was wounded by (not for) our transgressions, he was bruised by (not for) our iniquities, the covenant bond of our peace (exemption from war and chaos) was his responsibility, by his joining us together we are healed."

The servant poured out his blood to the people so that they would be healed. By absorbing the conflict of the community, the servant prevents further violence. The community can unite around the scourging of the servant. He pours out his blood so that the blood of others will not be shed. He is a substitute for the community. Without him the community would continue to fight and bruise each other. He renews the covenant bond of the community. He is the one who keeps them from disintegrating. His blood is life. The people cry out let his blood be upon us. His blood gives the community life. Because the people the people in the community do not love each other and commit idolatry, the servant is bruised in a very real way by the sins of the community. The sins are often shaped as stones, or in our case bombs and bullets. God doesn't want anyone to perish, so his servant, the one who takes seriously his commandments, takes upon himself the sins of the others. He refuses to lay his sins on someone else, he will not fight back, he is a lamb at the slaughter. By the transgressions of the people he was stricken. He had done no violence, and no deceit was in his mouth. He interceded for the transgressors, he stood between them and let them use him as a substitute for each other. Kill me instead of each other.

Matthew 16-17:

16When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils: and he cast out the spirits with his word, and healed all that were sick: 17That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.

Margaret Barker, Atonement: The Rite of Healing.
Raymund Schwager, The Suffering Servant
Excerpt from James Williams
Gil Bailie, Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch (re Isaiah)

Atonement and Murder

2006-06-19T21:02:00.001-05:00

A blogger by the name of Adrian Warnock is a little confused, a little disoriented, he believes that God the Father/the Most High God killed Yahweh, the Lord. A murder has taken place and he's trying to find the culprit. He thinks he has discovered the murderer. Astoundingly the person, or more appropriately the Godhead he accuses is none other than God the Father, the Most High God, the guy, the most esteemed personage who came up with the whole "thou shalt not murder" thing.

Mr. Warnock says:

Until he can understand why we think God killing his son is good news, I do not have any confidence that he will be able to accept the gospel.

This is the kind of thing I think we can rightly call neo-paganism. In pre-Christian pagan religions gods organized their own mob lynchings so that they could bring peace and salvation to their communities. We are the benefactors of 2000 years of Christianity, we now know that the violent laying of our sins on another person is wrong. We now know, because of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, that a mob lynching which was previously believed to have been orchestrated by a god to bring peace/salvation is not a salvific act by that god, but murder on the part of the lynch mob.

I think in the penal substitutionary atonement community that there is a belief that our sins, the sins we are committing today, in some way brought about the death of Christ. Matthew 25, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." I think we can say that if you kill your neighbor, you are killing Christ. If you support the bombing of Iraq, the bombing of Iraqi children, you support the bombing of Christ. We all have our rationalizations about the people we want killed, about how they're really evil, and about how it had to be done and that we had no other choice. We aren't really responsible, it was actually God punishing the designated evil doer. We aren't like those pagans and ancient people who seemed to kill arbitrarily our victims our really evil they deserve it. I'm rambling a little.

God the Father didn't place any sin on Jesus, Jesus absorbed our sin, he took our sins from us, he was a sin magnet. In times of crisis people look for vulnerable people to place their sins and conflict on, to be a substitute. People can't kick their boss, but they can take their frustrations out on their dog, or their wife or their kids. I keep going back to "The Horrible Miracle of Appolonius of Tyana". The poor old mendicant was not a plague demon, he was a poor old mendicant who was murdered. This was miracle, there is no reason to think that this is not a true story. There was crisis, a plague, a lot of conflict and violence in the society. The townspeople placed their sins on this poor old mendicant. They stoned him and murdered him, an innocent man, but they were healed, the plague and the violence disappeared. Each stone was a sin that was laid on upon this innocent scapegoat. The townsfolk believed he was a demon, Christianity says he was human and that a murder was committed.

I'm rambling, but violence is human violence, violent wrath is human wrath. Christ was murdered by humans, we apparently, and almost literally, continue to murder Him through our refusal to take responsibility for our own violence and sin.

Casualties in Iraq and Real Life Super Heroes

2006-06-08T20:46:00.000-05:00

Metafilter had a couple of good posts today. The latest in y2Karl's long line of great posts is this one, Why We Lost in Iraq: The Language of Noncombatant Death. The other one had to do with the real life Super Heroes I quite often see driving around our neighborhood, Superhero pizza man defeats nefarious villain. I might have to finally try their pizza. Mrs. Eschaton says it's pretty darn good.

New James Alison Article re Pentecost

2006-06-06T20:18:00.000-05:00

There's a new article by James Alison online regarding Pentecost. The Wild Ride. This is a particularly good Alisonian insight:

This was in fulfilment of a messianic prophecy which saw that, when the Messiah came, all the Holy Things which had been lost to the Temple would be restored in the New Temple. The Ark is of course already there, in the person of Mary. She had been recognised as Ark when John the Baptist, in Elizabeth’s womb, danced before her – Luke’s Greek word is the same as that used of David dancing before the Ark in the Septuagint. This is the Ark that bore the new and living covenant.

Margaret Barker's Very Own, Brand New Website!!!

2006-06-06T20:09:00.000-05:00

Margaret Barker now has her own website. She has a brief introduction to temple theology.
New papers include:
Creation Theology (pdf)
Temple, Time and Space (pdf)
Fragrance in the Making of Sacred Space (pdf)
Wisdom and Stewardship of Knowledge (pdf)

Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R) 2006

2006-05-31T10:07:00.000-05:00

Keep checking the COV&R 2006 website for conference papers.

Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R) 2006

2006-05-18T13:02:00.000-05:00

COV&R 2006 conference will soon be upon us. Here's the conference program. Looks like there's a lot of interesting papers. Looking forward to when they place them online. Here's the link to the COV&R 2005 papers.

James Alison Sermons

2006-05-04T14:57:00.000-05:00

Holy Week 2006. Apparently there is audio for three sermons by James Alison at the website of the All Saints' Espiscopal Church, Atlanta, GA. Haven't actually listened to them yet, but I will when I get home.

"From the Tomb," an Easter reflection by James Loney

2006-04-20T18:48:00.000-05:00

James Loney was one of the CPT hostages in Iraq. He has written "From the Tomb" a reflection on Easter. This is an excerpt:

Christ teaches us to love our enemies, do good to those who harm us, pray for those who persecute us. He calls us to accept suffering before we inflict injury. He calls us to pick up the cross and to lay down the sword.
We will most certainly fail in this call. I did. And I'll fail again. This does not change Christ's teaching that violence itself is the tomb, violence is the dead-end. Peace won through the barrel of a gun might be a victory but it is not peace. Our captors had guns and they ruled over us. Our rescuers had bigger guns and ruled over the captors. We were freed, but the rule of the gun stayed. The stone across the tomb of violence has not been rolled away.

Johnny Cash on Sesame Street

2006-04-19T08:36:00.000-05:00

Johnny Cash on Sesame Street via YouTube.

Girard Email List

2006-04-18T15:57:00.000-05:00

On the Girardian email list they're discussing the Christianity Today article on the atonement I discussed a few days ago. I can't give you step-by-step directions on how to sign up, but I'm sure you can figure it out. Sign up for the lite account and then search for the "Girard" list. The discussion is generally pretty interesting.

The Atonement and the Ascension

2006-04-18T08:29:00.000-05:00

This sermon, "The Ascension of Jesus", by the Rev. Kyle Halverson is pretty good. He references James Alison.

What did Mary see when she looked into the empty tomb? A burial table with two angels in white standing on either end — in other words, the empty tomb symbolized the Ark of the Covenant.

Parable of the Wedding Banquet

2006-04-13T23:42:00.000-05:00

Marty Aiken has written an astounding paper entitled, "The Kingdom of Heaven Suffers Violence; Discerning the Suffering Servant in the Parable of the Wedding Banquet." (Word Document) (Google HTML) (via Girardian Lectionary)

This summary is from the Girardian Lectionary:

Instead of seeing the king as making Jesus' audience think of God, he argues that this king would have sparked in Jesus' audience thoughts of kings much closer to their situation in history, namely, the Herods, especially the first King Herod. Drawing from historical sources such as Josephus, Aiken shows how the Herods actually behaved in ways very similar to the king in this parable. With a monarch so brutally dictatorial, does Jesus really mean for us to think of divine kingship with this parable instead of the kind of petty dictators such as the Herods who so litter human history with victims? I find Aiken's argument persuasive -- which is also reason why I have highlighted in recent weeks an overall approach to Matthew's parables of judgment that hesitates from too easily reading the central figures of power in these parables as representing God. See the remarks in this direction for Proper 20A and Proper 22A.

So who is the positive figure in this parable that makes us think of the kingdom of heaven? The person without a wedding garment at the end who seems to intentionally take on this king's brutality. Aiken points to a verse in Matthew's Gospel which I have subsequently come to argue as central, namely, Matthew 11:12: "From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force" (see the reflections for Advent 3A). The kingdom of heaven as suffering violence is represented in this parable not through the figure of the king who dishes it out, but in the lone figure at the end who takes it upon himself. Aiken thus also rightly brings in the figure of the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53.

Atonement

2006-04-13T23:36:00.000-05:00

I don’t pay much attention to the fundamentalist/conservative evangelical magazine Christianity Today but Google News sent me this article by Mark Dever. It looks like he serves as Pastor of some big, you guessed it, Southern Baptist church in Washington D.C. You kind find his blog here.

He seems to be a pretty reasonable Southern Baptist. Don’t get me wrong, he’s completely wrong in his defense of penal substitutionary atonement, but you kind of get the idea while reading the article that this idea of penal substitutionary atonement is beginning to whither away. One bright spot, from the Buck Eschatonian point of view, is that he does mention Rene Girard, albeit what he says doesn’t make much sense. It’s still surprising and promising that he’s even heard of him.

Let me just list a couple of things.
1. Apparently he has no interest in what the Day of Atonement in ancient Israel was about or what it symbolized. It wasn’t depicting Yahweh being murdered to appease the wrathful Father God. Blood in the ritual was LIFE. Yahweh/the High Priest/the Goat was pouring forth His blood for the renewal of the covenant. Creation was being repaired/renewed and sins/conflict were being taken away.

2. Primitive societies, such as ancient Israel, were violent places. All against all violence could break out any time. So to prevent this from happening Yahweh would pour forth his blood to the people to prevent them from destroying themselves.

3.The atonement ritual is a creation ritual. Genesis 1:3 says “…God said Let Him be Light, and He was Light.” Light is life and the life is in the blood. If you doubt my translation of Genesis 1:3, check the Hebrew and compare it to John 1.

4. Penal substitutionary atonement theory accepts the hypothesis that human desire originates within each individual human being. Mr. Girard through exhaustive examples has shown that this isn’t the case. Human desire is formed in relationship. It is formed by imitation. Human desire is formed through imitation of others. So it’s not a matter of an individual really wanting or desiring God, rather it’s God coming at you, and you allowing God to provide you His desires. Jesus said we should follow him. We should allow Jesus to create us in His image. Idolatry is allowing something/somebody besides God to provide us with our desires. Idolatrous desire will eventually and inevitably lead to murder. This is what Jesus says.

5. Penal substitutionary atonement relies on the idea of a spiritualized Hell. The New Testament understands Hell to be a very literal, this worldly place. Gehenna, the word translated Hell in the New Testament, symbolizes child and human sacrifice. It also means the burning garbage dump that was outside Jerusalem. Girard has shown how mimetic desire can spiral into human sacrifice. Desire received from somewhere other than God will lead inevitably to human sacrifice and the forever burning of all against all violence. For us this idea can be symbolized by the nuclear bomb. Human sacrifice still occurs today. It is called War.

6. The Hebrew word “nasa” means both to forgive and to bear.

7. The Christian idea of atonement is substitutionary. God doesn’t want to destroy us, we want to destroy and murder each other. 9/11 and the Iraq War prove this. Jesus has substituted Himself for us. Essentially He says “kill me instead of yourselves.” Instead of joining the mob, Jesus allows the violence to be directed at Him Put your sins onto Jesus and not onto someone else. A Christian should bear/forgive the sins of others. It’s a tough position to put yourself between the lynch mob and the victim about to be lynched or to stand between two warring factions. Humans made Him to be sin, so that we would direct our anger and violence towards Him and not each other. The children of Iraq were made to be evil so that we could go on living. Christianity says this is wrong and will lead to even more killing, we must love our neighbor.

8. The woman caught in adultery. Think angry, violent lynch mob. Jesus doesn’t make eye contact. He doesn’t want to reflect the mob’s anger back at them. These are not happy people, they want to kill someone. Jesus knows this. In a similar situation the pagan miracle worker Apollonius encourages the first stone, he encourages a mob to stone a poor beggar. As Girard says the first stone is difficult, there is no model to imitate. Rene Girard’s The First Stone, published in Renascence. The mob wants to place all their sin on the adulterous woman. She is a scapegoat. Girard says, “When Jesus suggests that only a man without sin should feel entitled to cast the first stone, he knows full well that, if these people honestly examine themselves, they will discover how similar they are to the adulterous woman. They will be ashamed of killing a fellow human being for an action they themselves commit with total impunity.” Jesus creates individuals, he does not create mobs. “The would-be lynchers came all together, as a united crowd and "they went away one by one, beginning with the elders."”

This quote from Girard, re the adulterous woman, reminds me of Genesis 1, “The Gospel text can be read almost allegorically, as the emergence of genuine personhood out of the primordial mob.” The mob is symbolized by the waters of chaos. The spirit of God moving upon the waters/mob. In Genesis 1:3 the light/life/blood is poured forth and the world begins to be created.

9. Penal substitutionary atonement makes God into the supreme violent being. It understands His essence not to be of love but of violence. It understands God to be overwhelming violence. He is simply more violent and violently powerful than Satan. It’s hard to believe and hard to understand for a worldly mind, but God conquers through love and radical self-giving. Atonement is very violent, but it’s not God’s violence, it is our violence.

I realize the above might not make much sense. Wish I had more time to create some kind of thorough, systematic presentation of how I understand the Atonement and the work of Jesus Christ. Hopefully I’ve said something that will cause somebody to do further research and reading.

Dante's Inferno

2006-04-07T09:02:00.001-05:00

As you can tell I haven't been posting much lately. I've been busy at work. Also, I'm trying to get through Dante's Inferno. I've been trying to find the tapes of Gil Bailie's lectures on the Purgatorio and Paradiso.

The Tahoe

2006-04-01T07:13:00.000-06:00

Here's the advertising paean I created to the Market God of American consumer culture. Make your own here.

Last Judgment

2006-03-31T13:28:00.000-06:00

Did the Last Judgment occur in Genesis 1:4 when God divided Light/Life from Darkness/Death? I think this is something to consider. I can't find evidence that the Bible understands history to be linear. I propose that maybe the Genesis creation story is not something that happened not only in the past, but continues to recur again today. Jesus is Light. "Let Him be light, and He was light." When there is light creation happens. The waters that God hovers over are the undifferentiated human masses. Christians are fishers of men, pulling people out of the waters and creating them as human beings in the likeness of God. Intelligent design arguments really do a disservice to Genesis.

Genesis / Creation / Light

2006-03-29T09:37:00.000-06:00

I don't know about you, but I think we should understand Genesis 1:3 as saying "God said 'Let Him be light, and He was light.'" I think this is quite obviously how the Gospel of John understood Genesis 1:3. If you look at the Hebrew this is entirely plausible. If we translate it this way it leads to an understanding of the interconnectedness between the early verses of Genesis and the Gospel of John, the Crucifixion and the Last Judgment. I haven't done all the research, but right now I would hypothesize that the Last Judgment can be found in the first verses of Genesis. Creation and the Last Judgment may be the same thing. The separation of Light and Darkness, and the separation of Life and Death.

Rene Girard on the Radio

2006-03-25T14:09:00.000-06:00

Rene Girard is interviewed on "Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature)" with Robert Harrison.

There are two interviews. Really good, intellectual radio.

Here they are.

Tom Fox and the Sacrificial Machinery

2006-03-23T20:38:00.000-06:00

Tom Fox was killed. In the last week or so two columns have been written. One was filled with the neo-pagan ravings of Cal Thomas (I mean neo-pagan to be dispassionately and objectively descriptive, I’m not name calling). Here is the well-reasoned response from Rev. David B. Miller.

First of all it should be obvious to anyone that Cal Thomas is a cynical propagandist and provocateur. He seems obsessed with the Other (and what they’re doing), and that there are no authentic, non-political actions. You’re literally either with us or against us. But that’s enough of my attempt to paint the psychological portrait of Mr. Thomas.

The world views peaceful and reconciliatory action as suspect or ineffectual, only killing and murder is useful. War and collective killing is for the serious, the destruction of whoever has been designated evil is the only thing that really can bring peace. The mobilization of armies is good, loving your neighbor unto death is naïve. Nietzsche and all the great pagan apologists would agree, only murder and sacrifice will bring about peace. Like the good old pagan Apollonius (and his amazing peace bringing miracles)we must not be afraid to stone and murder the enemies of the gods. The worldly among us are always ready to throw a Pharmakos over the cliff.

From Girardian Lectionary:
Now here's the most interesting thing about that word pharmakon: there was a closely related word pharmakos, and the pharmakos in Greek society was a person who they would ritually run out of town, and sometimes kill, during a time of crisis. In other words, the pharmakos was like the witch, during medieval days in Europe. The pharmakos was the person blamed for the evil that was befalling them. Think for a moment about how that relates to the pharmakon, the drug. Certainly, driving someone out of town and killing them is an evil, poisonous thing to do. But the instinct was that the community had to risk just the right dose of this poisonous thing in order to be cured from an even greater outbreak of death. In short, we would say that they would risk a small dose of violence, ritually killing just one person, in order to find a remedy against the greater evil of many people dying. So the pharmakos could be used when they were attacked by a physical illness, but the pharmakos could also be used as a remedy against impending rioting and unrest, or civil war. In other words, ancient peoples generally experienced violence as in the same category as physical illness, as evils that could kill you. And so they used a dose of violence against any deadly evil that they feared. That's why blood sacrifice is so universal across the beginnings of all human cultures. Killing a person or an animal on an altar was experienced like a drug, like a small dose of evil that was used as a remedy against wider outbreaks of evil.

Cal Thomas doesn’t doubt that they’re can be peace on Earth, it’s just that he seemingly believes the only way to bring about this peace is through the killing/murder of whoever is designated the current enemy. “Evil must be defeated if peace on earth is to exist.” This “defeating evil” always seems to consist of killing and bombing our perceived enemies and the innocent people and children around them.

I know I’m rambling, but what do people think Jesus is talking about in John 10.
Again from Girardian Lectionary, notes from a lecture by Gil Bailie:

Sheep Gate, which is the gate in the wall of Jerusalem through which the sheep were led and then held in a holding area on their way to the altar of sacrifice. It was the entry point for the victims of the sacrificial regime…

The most important reference to sheep in the New Testament is sacrificial. Sheep are the sacrificial animals par excellence...If we are correct in suggesting that the ones who come in by the gate are victims, then the thieves and bandits are those who manipulate the system by redirecting its sacrificiality towards more expendable victims.

Is Jesus saying that he will lead his people through the sacrificial machinery? Is this why the people call him “mad”?

Also what is the common understanding of Mark 8:34? Jesus says take up your cross. In light of John 10 is he asking us to follow him into the sacrificial machinery. Is this what Tom Fox did? One thing I think we can safely assume is that Jesus is not telling us to take up the literal sword/gun and go and defeat us some “evil”. Is Jesus saying, “pick up the instrument of your own execution?”

To a man caught up with the powers of the world “…the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.”

But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: that no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.

Rene Girard says, “The Johannine Logos discloses the truth of violence by having itself expelled.” Human society is founded upon violence and the collective expulsion of a person or group of persons.

Creation

2006-03-22T15:42:00.000-06:00

Something to think about. The Genesis creation story, the first verses of the Gospel of John and the Passion of Jesus Christ are telling the same story in a different way. The Passion of Jesus Christ is a creation story in the same/very similar way that the Genesis account is a creation story. Rene Girard, in Things Hiddens Since the Foundation of the World says "John's prologue undoubtedly refers to the passion." I believe the Day Atonement rituals and the story of the Suffering Servant are creation narratives, in the same/similar way as the Genesis account.

Robin Collins Paper on the Atonement

2006-03-22T10:20:00.000-06:00

Here's an earlier somewhat rough-draft essay from Robin Collins on the Atonement. I linked to Part II in an earlier post.

"I...argue that the Satisfaction and Penal theories of the Atonement are so unsatisfactory that we would be better off simply to accept the doctrine of the Atonement as a mystery than to accept one of them...After critiquing the traditional Western theories, therefore, I shall develop, in a philosophically careful and clear way, a much more adequate theory."

Rene Girard on Satan

2006-03-15T12:45:00.000-06:00

I've been rereading Rene Girard's I See Satan Fall Like Lightning. His discussions re Satan are very good. Here's some excerpts from various books on the subject of Satan. Via the absolutely fantastic Girardian Lectionary.

Excerpts from René Girard's essay "Satan," from The Girard Reader.

An Excerpt from René Girard's I See Satan Fall Like Lightning.

An Excerpt from René Girard's I See Satan Fall Like Lightning - Chapter 8
Powers and Principalities

Here's a section on the Suffering Servant and the cycle of mimetic victimage.

Paul Nuechterlein does a great service with his Girardian Lectionary site, I can't say enough good things about it. Here's the page you want to start at if you want to do some research on specific verses.

Tom Fox

2006-03-13T06:39:00.000-06:00

I haven't been following the situation in Iraq as much as I used to, but as you may know Tom Fox, who was taken hostage about three months ago, was found dead in Baghdad. He was a Christian and Quaker who went to Iraq with the Christian Peacemaker teams. The below is via Electronic Iraq.

Here is Tom Fox's blog, Waiting in the Light.

"We Mourn the Loss of Tom Fox"

Blog Excerpts Part 1

Blog Excerpts Part 2

A quote from Mr. Fox:

When I allow myself to become angry I disconnect from God and connect with the evil force that empowers fighting. When I allow myself to become fearful I disconnect from God and connect with the evil force that encourages flight. I take Gandhi and Jesus at their word - if I am not one with God then I am one with Satan. I don't think Gandhi would use that word but Jesus certainly did, on numerous occasions. The French theologian Rene Girard has a very powerful vision of Satan that speaks to me: 'Satan sustains himself as a parasite on what God creates by imitating God in a manner that is jealous, grotesque, perverse and as contrary as possible to the loving and obedient imitation of Jesus.'

Christian Peacemaker Teams

Models of Atonement

2006-03-10T10:39:00.000-06:00

I found this article, Models of Atonement, by Ted Peters. Trying to get a grasp on a Girardian influenced theory of atonement, using Margaret Barker's research into the symbolism of the First Temple Day of Atonement. If I can ever find time to actually put something together I think it will be quite interesting. A lot of research to be done, a lot of different strands of symbols and ideas to put together coherently. Trying to provide high-quality content here at the Chronicles of Indestructible Life.

Rene Girard and Hamlet

2006-03-09T09:41:00.000-06:00

This is some good reading on Rene Girard and Hamlet. Just found Liethart.com this morning, seems to have a lot interesting articles.

Girard and Atonement

2006-03-05T21:15:00.000-06:00

I've been reading some of the essays from "VIOLENCE RENOUNCED: RENE GIRARD, BIBLICAL STUDIES, AND PEACEMAKING", which was edited by Willard Swartley. I may have read this essay before, can't remember, but anyway it looks pretty interesting. Robin Collins, "Girard and Atonement: An Incarnational Theory of Mimetic Participation". (Word File)

I've been busy at work and Simon, our very handsome baby boy, has been sick. So hopefully I'll be soon finding the time to provide high quality blog content on a more regular basis.

Margaret Barker's The Great Angel

2006-03-01T08:25:00.000-06:00

Was checking the Margaret Barker section of the Thinly Veiled website the other day and noticed that someone has put up the the first five chapters of Margaret Barker's book The Great Angel.

The Beginning and the End

2006-02-26T08:30:00.000-06:00

Margaret Barker, at the end of the fifth chapter of her book The Gate of Heaven, says:

"Central to the myths was belief in the human manifestation of God. A human figure occupied the divine throne and came to bring judgment. The presence of the figure also brought renewed life and fertility. The human figure was probably once the king who was also the high priest. He was able to enter the holiest place of the throne, to the point beyond time and place from which all things could be seen and known; one wonders what was done by the earlier kings who went up to occupy that throne. Behind the letter to the Hebrews there seems to lie a belief that the high priest carried a substitute for his own life-blood. What picture of reality lay behind this ritual? Why was it necessary for the human manifestation of the divine to carry his life-blood into the holy place?"

As far as I know she has yet to answer the above questions. I haven't seen any indication that she is familiar with Girardian anthropology and mimetic theory. Her work is most interesting because it deals with the symbolic origins of Christianity. Her writing on the Day of Atonement and the rituals of the first temple is also most thought-provoking and informative.

She quotes the Gospel of Thomas:

The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us how our end will be." Jesus said, "have you discovered, then, the beginning that you look for the end? For where the beginning is there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death." (Thomas 18)

Pharmakos and Rene Girard

2006-02-17T13:39:00.000-06:00

Here's a good article regarding pharmakos and Girardian theory. "Hate never dispelled hate: no place for the pharmakos"

Margaret Barker: Beyond the Veil of the Temple. The High Priestly Origin of the Apocalypses

2006-02-15T14:47:00.000-06:00

Here is a chapter from Margaret Barker's excellent book The Great High Priest. It touches on a lot of the things I've been discussing recently. Beyond the Veil of the Temple. The High Priestly Origin of the Apocalypses

Creation and the Lamb Slain

2006-02-14T22:22:00.000-06:00

Revelation 13:8 has an enigmatic phrase, “…the lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” The “Lamb” in Revelation is Jesus, I think we can all agree on this. What does the “foundation of the world” mean in this verse? I’ve discussed the Greek word “katabole” which is translated in this verse as “foundation” previously, but I didn’t really come to any conclusions. I think it’s reasonable to say that “foundation of the world” relates to Genesis 1. Let’s go with that, Revelation 13:8 refers to Genesis 1. Is that text telling us that Jesus has been slain at creation or slain repeatedly since the “foundation of the world”? The other choice we have is that the “foundation of the world” occurs when Jesus dies on the Cross. Are there any other options?

At this point I think it’s time for some quotes from Rene Girard.

“That only an investigation of the founding of religion will yield the secret of man.”
Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, 3

“The mechanism of the scapegoat victim can always be recognized behind all religious operations.”
Double Business Bound, 104

“All religious rituals spring from the surrogate victim, and all the great institutions of mankind, both secular and religious, spring from ritual. Such is the case with political power, legal institutions, medicine, the theater, philosophy and anthropology itself. It could hardly be otherwise, for the working basis of human thought, the process of symbolization, is rooted in the surrogate victim.”
Violence and the Sacred, 306

“The sole purpose of religion is to prevent the recurrence of reciprocal violence.”
Violence and the Sacred, 55

The writer of the Book of Revelation is referencing something when he says, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” We have to try to figure out what he is referencing.

Luke 11:47-51 says, “That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world.” So that’s interesting, the blood of the prophets was also shed from the foundation of the world. Another thing that I noticed is that the word “shed” could be translated as “poured forth.”

So now back to the creation narrative in Proverbs 8:22-31. In Proverbs 8:23 the word translated “set up” looks to me like it could be translated “poured forth.” My interlinear bible software says "I-was-poured-libation" is a possibility. This appears to be a word study on the Hebrew word “nawsak". This section in Proverbs is describing creation and Wisdom. I think we can at least allege that based on John 1 that Wisdom is Jesus.

If I’m understanding Girard correctly, we should be able to find, in the Biblical creation stories, hints of a murder or of someone being slain, or of a life being poured forth.

Margaret Barker on Wisdom

2006-02-13T11:39:00.000-06:00

I'm going to be continuing my research into Creation and Wisdom, because I think it is important from a Girardian perspective. "The Lamb slain since the foundation of the World". Wisdom seems to have been present at "Creation" and in Proverbs 8:23 there is an indication that Wisdom was "poured out" since the beginning, and a bit later, in verse 24, I think, "travail" and waters come up. Proverbs 8:22-31 should be very interesting for Mimetic/Scapegoat theory. It is a creation or originary narrative. Anyway, this is Margaret Barker's essay Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?, it provides some good background on Wisdom.

Jerome Soneson and Gordon Kaufman

2006-02-12T15:37:00.000-06:00

I was reading this interview of Justin Taylor on Adrian Warnock's blog and I'm following along and all of a sudden Mr. Taylor is discussing some familiar subjects. Namely, Gordon Kaufman and his book "Theology for a Nuclear Age". Reading further, I find out that he took the same class that I had taken in 1994. Mr. Taylor doesn't say it but I assume his professor was also Dr. Jerome Soneson. I have to thank Dr. Jerome Soneson for making my four years of college worthwhile. He's an amazing professor. I learned a lot from him, how to read academic texts and how to think freely and creatively.

I had a similar experience as Mr. Taylor. In college I was also losing my faith not because of Drs. Soneson and Kaufman but because of fundamentalist/conservative theology and politics. Dr. Soneson and his course and also my introduction to the works of Jacques Ellul really saved me from agnosticism and atheism and started me on this long road of understanding Christian theology and symbolism.

I remember Dr. Soneson during one class period reading a section of H. Richard Neibuhr's "Faith in God and in the Gods" aloud and just being overcome with very poetic and powerful words and having to leave the room for a short time. He is a very passionate teacher and that one class made may time in college valuable and worthwhile.

Genesis 1:1

2006-02-12T14:29:00.000-06:00

I'm doing research regarding the translation and meaning of Genesis 1:1-3. The below isn’t a finished product, must leave it open for addition and revision as I acquire and process new information. It’s really only a very beginning of the extensive research and interpretation that is needed. The best thing I can hope for is that it will bring forth a lot of questions.

To put it mildly there are some “problems” with our English translations of Genesis 1:1-3. Our translations don’t tell us the whole story. I wrote about these verses previously.

The first word of Genesis is spelled something like “be’raesheet”. It is a compound word. The prefix “be” means “with”, “raesheet” means a “first wisdom”. The Aramaic translation, the Targum Neofiti I recognizes this and translates the first verse of Genesis thusly, “From the beginning, with wisdom, the Memra of the Lord created and perfected the heavens and the earth”. Proverbs 3:19 says “The Lord by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens.” Psalm 104:24 says “O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches.”

Proverbs 8:22-31 describes a personified, pre-existent Wisdom. This set of verses is a creation narrative. Using my trusty interlinear bible software I can tell that this section needs more research. The English translation that I’m reading isn’t telling the whole story, there’s more here than meets the eye, especially from Girardian and Margaret Barker Temple Theology perspectives. But I think we can conclude that this text parallels Genesis 1 and that Wisdom was there when God began the creation.

The first word of Genesis, “be’raesheet”, is a very interesting word and I should devote a lot more attention to it, and rabbis through the ages have. This includes a lengthy exposition on Genesis 1 and “be’raesheet” and it’s potential meanings.

Genesis 1:1 can be translated something like this: “In/With Wisdom Elohim created the heavens and the earth”. I think this was how the Gospel of John understood Genesis 1:1. In John 1:3 it says, “All things were made by him (the Word) and without him was not anything made that was made.”

My next post will be on Genesis 1:3 and how it could/should be translated “And Elohim said ‘let Him be light’: and He was light.”

Rene Girard / Mimetic Crisis / Islam

2006-02-11T13:31:00.000-06:00

This is an old interview with Rene Girard, but it might be pertinent to the current "Cartoon" crisis. "What Is Occurring Today Is a Mimetic Rivalry on a Planetary Scale."

Margaret Barker Video - Mormon Conference

2006-02-02T16:49:00.000-06:00

I haven't watched this yet. It looks like she's discussing something about Joseph Smith/Old Testament history. Here's the 300K video and the 56K video. Here's the MP3. Her introduction and response starts at about the 42 minute mark. She's responding to another paper. As usual sounds very interesting. Old Testament history, King Josiah all the usual themes. (via Joseph Smith Conference)

James Alison: Blindsided By God

2006-02-01T06:09:00.000-06:00

Here's James Alison's speech "Blindsided by God: reconciliation from the underside", given at Trinity Institute's Anatomy of Reconciliation Conference. Here is the video of the speech. (Windows Media). His speech starts around the 13:20 mark.

Anthropoetics

2006-01-31T10:44:00.000-06:00

There's a new issue of Anthropoetics. From a previous issue, Rene Girard's review of "The Passion of the Christ".
Also of note:
Writing in the Dust: Irony and Lynch-Law in the Gospel of John
Matthew Schneider

Celsus, the First Nietzsche:
Resentment and the Case Against Christianity
Thomas F. Bertonneau

Interview With Girard

Don't forget Eric Gans' "Chronicles of Love & Resentment"

Interlinear Septuagint

2006-01-30T11:02:00.000-06:00

Studylight.org has an interlinear Septuagint. The Septuagint, for those that may not know, is the Greek Old Testament. The Septuagint is actually older than the Hebrew Old Testament. I think I got that fact from Margaret Barker, correct me if I'm wrong. I'll have to check the reference. I'm sure there is some debate about the dates they were both written.

James Alison Interview

2006-01-29T14:15:00.000-06:00

Here's a short interview/introduction with James Alison. Apparently Trinity Church/Institute in New York City has a conference coming up. The Anatomy of Reconciliation - From Violence to Healing.

Margaret Barker

2006-01-28T11:46:00.000-06:00

I found this introductory article about Margaret Barker. It goes through some of the issues she's working on and why her work is so important and interesting.

James Alison Video

2006-01-27T06:45:00.000-06:00

Here's video of James Alison's speech "Embodying God’s Earth-shaking Mercy" (Windows Media). (via Washington National Cathedral)

Genesis 1:1 - "With the Torah"

2006-01-26T14:16:00.000-06:00

Doing some research on Genesis 1:1-3. Here's a quote from wikipedia. Apparently the midrash Genesis Rabbah supports one of my observations. Here's the pertinent quote from Wikipedia:

Similarly, midrash Genesis Rabbah (1:1) actually opens by declaring that the first word of the verse means "with the Torah" and it suggests that the Divine Architect used the Torah as a blueprint. (Cf. Philo, De opificio mundi 17-20 and John 1:1)

War and Sacrifice

2006-01-26T06:06:00.000-06:00

Richard Koenigsberg has been writing some interesting things regarding war and sacrifice. He's also involved in a website called Ideologies of War and Terro r. Quite a few papers on both websites to go through.

Genesis, Creation, Light and Yahweh

2006-01-24T23:20:00.000-06:00

The translation of Genesis 1:2 poses problems. Creationism vs. Evolution. I’m not going to get involved in the particulars of that power struggle, but a certain subset of Creationists called the “Gap Theorists” has happened upon something very interesting. They have noticed a problem with the traditional translations of Genesis 1:2 They contend, “A second “proof” put forth to substantiate the gap theory is the declaration that the word “was” in Genesis 1:2 should be translated “became.”. Might the correct translation of Genesis 1:2 be “And the earth became without form and void…”. Jeremiah, in his time, saw the earth become without form and void. (Jeremiah 4:23)

The beginning of Genesis is not about the creation of the world, in the Intelligent Design sense, but about God entering into relationship with humanity.

So this is my hypothesis regarding Genesis 1:1-2. I realize it will need quite a bit more documentation and expansion.

Proverbs 3:19-20 says:

19The LORD by wisdom hath founded the earth; by understanding hath he established the heavens. 20By his knowledge the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew.

In light of Proverbs 3:19 should Genesis 1:1-2 be translated “With/By/In wisdom Elohim created the heaven and the earth. The earth became chaos and vacant and darkness was on the surface of the deep/chaos and the spirit of Elohim moved upon the face of the waters.”

Okay I’m on a roll here. On to Genesis 1:3. With the help of John 1:1-5 I think we might be able to translate this differently. Of course this is all being done with my handy interlinear bible software from Scripture4All. What we learn from John is that in the beginning was the Word. All things were made by him. In him was life; and the life was the light of men and most importantly, the light shineth in the darkness. What I’m going to propose isn’t original as evidenced by this Google search. I propose that Genesis 1:3 could be translated as “And Elohim said, Let him be light: and he was light.”

I need to do quite a bit more work on this. The symbolism in Genesis is incredible. I’m collecting quite a bit of evidence regarding all this. Give me your thoughts.