Tanista
16m ago
The Son of Man was an actual figure within Judaism at the time, that's why Jesus talks about him in the third person. It was only later on that Christian writers decided that Jesus was talking about himself.
This I think has been challenged by scholars who are more focused on Christology like Larry Hurtado , who also reviewed Ehrman's book
Ehrman's field of study is specifically textual criticism, and his opinions on Christology changed over time (from a normal, human Jesus who developed into a God) to come close to Hurtado's "early high Christology" view on other matters but I'm not sure about this one (Hurtado, for his part, seems inclined to downplay precedents for the "Christian mutation" of early devotion to Jesus).
One thing I noticed however is that the source of all Biblical errors-according-to-empirical-science is Hebrew scripture. Almost no errors are in the New Testament outside of the books that go hard on Hebrew Scripture, like Matthew.
This isn't true. The census described in Luke is not how any sensible census would work. Who would send a man to his ancestral home from a thousand years ago?
What I think you're noticing is that the New Testament is vastly compressed in both time and length compared to the Old Testament. The events were within living memory for the writers (compared to much of the Hebrew Bible, where writers and redactors seem to have lost the meaning of certain things) and hell even we have documentation of figures like Pilate from Jewish sources (though what they knew is very debatable - Dale Allison's Jesus of Nazareth gives an alarming hypothetical at the start of his book about a particularly prolific and talented writer of Jesus sayings in the pre-Gospel era whose work is simply impossible to disentangle from what Jesus actually said).
Another question of coherency is what does Jesus save us from? The canon claims Jesus saves us from ... himself. Yes, in this canon, Jesus is one person of the Trinity, a single being that will torture you if you don't accept his salvation. That's kind of an odd way to behave ... I'm not judging morally since I accept theology is above morality, but it still seems intuitively odd.
This is one of my personal biggest challenges with Christianity. Yes, the Gospels preserve the sense that most people can't know what Jesus is until he helps them along, but this is also consistent with nobody knowing because it's a cope cause Plan A failed.
Now, is this a crazy reading? Not at all. It's a popular historical reading that lost out but not without a fight. It fits the theology of Marcion and some Gnostic groups, who were declared heretics in the mid-to-late 2nd century by proto-orthodox writers. Before around that point, this idea was more popular. I have a radical, maybe unfounded idea, that this theology even could be the original theology of the Gospels, but this is controversial in the Church and the Academy. In the Church it's obvious why: it's the same Church that called it heresy. In the Academy we have atheists who claim Jesus was an essene or something.
There's a range of views on Jesus in the academy. I think the bigger problem for scholars is that this is not in our earliest source. Paul already shows a high Christology, or at least conflating or associating Jesus with God in a way that is very odd if he thinks the Hebrew God is evil. None of the Gospels explicitly say that and imply continuity too, but it's pretty bad for your argument that it's just nowhere to be seen in the undisputed epistles.
It also poses a real difficulty: you're right that the Gospels (Matthew especially) is concerned with proving Jesus was prophesied in the Old Testament, because performing miracles alone means nothing (Deuteronomy damns the prophet who performs miracles but preaches against God). The prophecy is a necessary form of authentication.
If you're going this route, the Old Testament is worthless and the authentication mechanism is lost and Jesus is some guy who maybe performed miracles. That could mean anything. A real problem for Islam, as an example.
In the Academy we have atheists who claim Jesus was an essene or something. I will admit my belief is somewhat loaded on the idea that Jesus actually performed miracles. I lean towards this because I don't have a restricted prior against magic, I think all things are possible for the right being, and I think Jesus was obviously somebody because otherwise we would not have a religion about him, particularly one where he died very quickly, a material failure, with only a handful of followers. Other prophets accumulate riches and a harem.
A lot of Jewish messiahs didn't achieve harems and did die horribly when they faced Rome or the rulers of the world. John the Baptist come to mind. Some even suggest that Jesus was a follower of John (the Gospels themselves record that people confused them) who appropriated his movement in life or in death, which explains his success somewhat. There was a preexisting market.
Dale Allison has a discussion on why Jesus' movement survived in the book I cited above. His argument is that Jesus' adaptations to Roman rule (non-violence, indirect resistance) were not enough to save his life given his shenanigans at the Temple but made the Romans not particularly inclined to hunt down his followers as they would other rebels.
This left something to start over. And, besides that, there was already a significant portion of "god-fearers" who were attracted to the Jewish religion. It just took Paul to make it fully acceptable.
Tanista
1hr ago
Jews mostly hate Republicans.
Probably a Jewish American/Israeli split here?
Tanista
1hr ago
The other 50% would be about the US using its political muscle to help Israel against third parties (such as sanctioning ICC judges who prosecute Israeli officials, legally punishing boycott movements, or pressuring other countries against taking actions against it).
Given the attempt to mainstream the ICC as an authority in America (currently limited by toothless statements by Mamdani), the position of the Trump admin per Rubio is that this is an attempt to nip European-backed legal imperialism (which they say America never agreed with or signed up to) before it ceases to go for American allies and decides America itself is a valid target.
It's not entirely different - Somalis are not dominating the rankings in terms of startups founded compared to welfare consumed in either the UK or US. There's a risk that the system will become Europeanized by taking migrants not selected for EHC status for moralistic reasons. Happened before, with other Democratic administrations and America is trending towards getting a new one.
But yes, selection has been very helpful here. The question is whether it's just selection or some other factor (e.g. low numbers forcing assimilation - America has far fewer Muslims, I wonder how optimistic the European discourse was when they were at 1%)
Tanista
23hr ago
I dunno. Imagine the median secular Muslim activist at the DSA or DNC before October 7. Are they pro-Israel?
I think it was low salience but high in consensus until the war. Then it became more of an organizing principle.
Tanista
23hr ago
and in a case like Abdul El-Sayed, it's pretty clear that opposition to Israel is central to his worldview and his political advocacy whereas opposition to gender ideology is pretty clearly not.
Right, so it's not a product of Islam that he'd rather agitate for the return of the third holiest site in the faith and the removal of the rival religion claiming it rather than the bathroom culture for a non-Muslim country whose schools he has ways of avoiding?
I'm not saying the former is objectively a more Muslim priority but it's at least debatable.
Tanista
23hr ago
One question is: why not just take an Egyptian Copt instead?
Islam is disproportionately represented in terror attacks, and the European experience is that illiberalism doesn't dissipate in a couple of generations. How do we make it so those aren't concerns besides favoring non-Muslims?
It's a serious problem for me personally, and for any country with a mass migration program that must skim from 2 billion Muslims.
I don’t believe you can be both “Muslim” and “Western”.
Dunno. There is a quietist strain in Islam, though I think it's harder in a democracy.
But "abide by the local rules and do not get involved" isn't really what people waving the globohomo flags are doing.
The anti-Israel in his worldview feels very much like sports team fandom to me. I am not sure if Sayed types have to be anti-Israel but if you are a Democratic politician today and Democrats hate Israel then rooting for the Muslim side feels like the correct team to cheer for.
You have it backwards: it's sports fandom to the Westerners. The El Sayed types were almost certainly already be anti-Israel as an inheritance that they now feel they can bring to politics because the cordon sanitaire against being anti-Israel is breaking. Before it broke, they (and their white allies) were still trying.
Tanista
2d ago
They're not going to get all Palestinians, unless they're willing to go to war with their neighbors.
Tanista
2d ago
Even if you did destroy the Palestinians, you'll never hear the end of it. There'll be endless calls for some form of contrition or reparations, as with the Jews. The movies won't be as good but it'll just become a pillar of discourse.
I suspect that what some people subconsciously feel is that Israel won because it had emotional blackmail because of genocide, so they're not gonna stop hammering on that button. Palestine is too useful to all leftists and Muslim tribalists to abandon.
Probably a more realistic "win" for them than actually helping El Sayed. Uygur, Hasan Piker and all of the other DSA-type candidates are trying to essentially steal the Democratic party off Trump's unpopularity. The goal is to get DSA/anti-Israel candidates into office in a year when Democrats should be able to elect a ham sandwich and then use that as proof of the rising wave of socialism.
So why not launch an anti-Israel attack ad? It's likely not going to change anyone's mind but if El Sayed wins, you've broken the taboo and you can say that the Israel-supporting establishment threw everything at you and failed.
Tanista
6d ago
What is the hard right's attitude towards sexual morality? No furries? I'd assume there's no consensus on divorce or homos at this point.
I think the issue is that male sexual fantasies and power fantasies usually get bundled together.
There's no power fantasy in the flipped version of Twilight so it comes across as self indulgent even for fantasy. Unless you count Bella smelling so goshdarned good vampires want to eat her (I don't) or her inability to be impacted by magic (I guess)
The male version would be closer to Wanted with some tweaks. You get good at something (perhaps due to an unearned genetic legacy) and after a lot of blood and pain,preferably other men's, you get to kiss Angelina Jolie in front of your cheating ex. Because those are the sorts of men who do that.
(Wanted itself is partly a subversion - Angelina Jolie isn't suddenly into some random schlub, there's actually a believable plot reason for that to happen - but the skeleton is there)
I can see why you come to that conclusion from reading The Darkness That Comes Before but Kellhus isn't the Bakkerian self-insert. He represents rapacious modernity more than he is a person. It's meant to be uncomfortable.
The real Bakkerian self-insert is Achamian - the sorcerer. He's a philosopher, like Bakker himself, continually praises the path of doubt and uncertainty and is willing to keep fighting for humanity despite it writing him off as damned.
they've somehow managed to get themselves back into 2nd place
"Somehow" meaning that their main opposition, a party built around one man that every other party is opposed to, ran into a well-publicized campaign finance scandal recently?
I personally think the series is worth it and better than the bleakness on its face, but this is a common reaction (the gender bleakness, not the Marty Stu, not sure which character you mean there), which is why I asked how he felt about Bakker. He's...less uneven on how modern/irenic the gender and religious politics are, but too much for many.
Tanista
8d ago
which is just eye-roll inducing for me: you have magic but no supernatural?
This was deeply annoying about the Odyssey. "In a time of apparent magic" and then we see people get turned into pigs. Not in any sort of ambiguous way either. Odysseus even says she gets her power from the Gods!
And if you're going to show that in a pseudo-objective fashion, why do we also need to play coy with Athena?
Of course, if you have actual gods instead of just Bronze Age Zatanna , the whole therapeutic journey of self-discovery where the most important thing is how the protagonist feels about things needs to be rejiggered somewhere.
Tanista
8d ago
Oh, Bakker is up on Mount Rushmore for me as far as epic fantasy goes. Nothing quite scratches the same itch. If the idea of the First Crusade filtered through Tolkien, Herbert and Nietzsche appeals you'll likely find something in there for you.
And I think he treats religion - and the excruciating choices it puts us to - with far more seriousness than most of the genre can manage.
If anything the criticism is that he is too even and unrelentingly negative when it comes to patriarchy.
For all GRRM's flaws, and I think the setting gets sweaty after too many pages, I'm looking for more ASOIAF, but maybe with a more contained storyline and less bloat. Given that ASOIAF has to be one of the most bloated fantasy stories ever told, that ought not to be hard to find.
The first series - Prince of Nothing - I think is pretty focused for epic fantasy. There is some bloat in the sequel series though (4 more books, one more than expected).
Characters have no consistent values. Sex is post-Sexual Revolution casual but look out oh no there's the medieval patriarchy, but also characters don't actually do anything interesting when confronted with it they just kind of shrivel. The women are too open and powerful and feminist, but supposedly acknowledged to be exceptional but we don't see any other women so... He wants to create complex characters that do bad things sometimes but also have heroic qualities, but misses the mark, the sins don't have much weight and the struggles feel fake as a result. The best books that use grimdark settings present us with likeable characters that we identify with, that act according to their own internal sense of right and wrong with a consistent moral compass, then deliver a result that is so brutal and discordant that it creates psychic discomfort in the reader and makes you think.
How do you feel about Scott Bakker's work? Because I think he makes a real effort at this (he explicitly said he refused to make certain characters female because it'd under the patriarchy in the worldbuilding) and has subsequently been vastly more criticized than Abercrombie (the bleakness at best turns people off, at worst annoys them) and vastly less successful.
Tanista
11d ago
It's the opposite. The conflict is that everyone knows House is a genius and he gets special privileges because of it, including getting to be an asshole to people.
His direct boss is shockingly tolerant of his bs on the grounds that he's irreplaceable, other people are not.
Tanista
11d ago
How many female protagonists regularly cheat on their loving husbands?
Only one that comes to mind is Shiv Roy from Succession and the entire structure of the show is such that it doesn't stand out (it's a black comedy and they're all supposed to be awful)
And people still complain she's judged unfairly compared to her male counterparts. YMMV though.
Tanista
11d ago
Frankly, I never understood the appeal of Drew Barrymore
She's the nepobaby, Hollywood royalty. But I'd also mark her as the weakest link.
All I could think reading this:
Hannah is the best structural engineer at the firm, and the character pays for it. She's lonely, or her marriage failed, or there's a paragraph somewhere in chapter 3 where she wonders what she gave up for her career. Her competence arrives with an invoice billed to her personal life. Now, go find the man in your book who's simply good at his job, and find me the part of the story that details how much he pays for it. Most often, there isn't one. Tony is good at what he does and the book lets that be simple and straightforward. [...] Once the book has established that her skill costs her something, the skill stops being a pleasure and turns into a wound and readers stop enjoying her being good at things and start worrying for her, which contradicts why anybody wanted a competent FMC leading the book to begin with.
Was "does anyone think House is incompetent?". Does it take away from the fun of the show because he has flaws?
I've been rewatching that show recently and "best X in the business but pays for it" is a perfect description of him. The tortured male genius isn't new. I don't stop thinking House is competent because House has a limp or a drug addiction or is, frankly, a cunt. If anything these weaknesses are what make him tolerable as a character. You can't both be an all-knowing genius and get away with being a cunt unless you have an excuse.
No matter what Andrew Huberman says about how good it is, I can't take a cold shower without flinching.
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