Somewhat better than the secular atheistic-leaning theologians are the ones from a believing background. But considerably worse are those from a fundamentalist background gone ‘scholarly.’ Mercifully, there are not many of them because Bart Ehrman is more than enough, thank you very much. He goes on and on about how Christians in the first century did this or that “because they didn’t want to go to hell.” Sometimes I call him “the Bible thumper who became a theologian but you can still see the Bible thumper in the theologian.” I far prefer some egghead professor discarding anything suggesting divine action because ‘critical thinking’ doesn’t allow that than Bart also discarding and justifying it as a departure from the unreasonable doctrines that because they are unreasonable does not infest the teachings of the secular scholars in the first place. 

He is also the only theologian I would characterize as a “smart-ass theologian.” Hear him go on about the “seven last expressions of Christ on the cross.” (there are that many phrases if you count up the gospels.) It never occurs to him to reconcile them. He takes for granted that since Jesus’ words from one gospel do not appear in another that the writers just interjected whatever words fit their own ‘theologies’ with the conclusion that there’s no way to know just what Jesus said and maybe he didn’t say anything other than ‘ouch.’

Whereas the Memorial speaker last night—I have never heard anyone combine the words this way—stated Jesus’ words at Matthew 27:46, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” then continued to Luke 23:46, “And Jesus called out with a loud voice and said: “Father, into your hands I entrust my spirit.” At first glance, these two verses don’t reconcile very well. Would you entrust your spirit to someone who had forsaken you? Then the speaker went on to reconcile them. The withdrawal of spirit (forsaking) was so that Jesus would face the final test of integrity without God’s finger on the scales. One unaided perfect man (Adam) rebelled against God. Another unaided perfect man (Jesus) proves loyal to God. The counterbalance is complete.

That Jesus absorbed this, accepted it, and perhaps figured it out is evident in the saying found in Luke’s gospel, “into your hands I entrust my spirit.” His love for God was such that, even unaided by God’s spirit, he would prove loyal to the end. 

The speaker reconciled the two. Why doesn’t Bart do it? Why don’t any of them do it? The tricky reconciliation is only possible to someone who has an overall grasp not just of scripture but of the main theme of the scriptures. The secular scholarly theologians don’t have that. They haven’t a clue as to the overall theme of the Bible and appear to assume there isn’t any, that it is just a religious hodgepodge of individual ‘theologiies’ competing to outdo each other. 

***The bookstore

The Memorial speaker spent more than the usual time (so it seemed to me) in discussion of how many had the heavenly hope, and, if they did not, were they stuck with some second-rate inferior “earth” promise? Moreover, if anyone did need hand-holding on this matter, it was okay. Adam left us all to die, he pointed out. It is okay to need reassurance.

How many Senators are there in the United States, he asked. 100. How many Representatives? 435. How many in total constitute the government? 535. How do we know that? Because it is written. Where is it written? In the Constitution. You can see where this is going. The number of humans to rule in the heavenly government is also written in the Christian “Constitution.” It is 144,000.

535 to represent a nation of 330 million. 144,000 to represent a nation of ultimately several billion. It’s about right. Close enough. Furthermore, since the beginning of time, God has determined where his creatures will serve him. Angels will serve him in heaven, humans on earth, and “no one has ever had an issue with this.” We don’t choose where we serve him, he pointed out, but we do choose if we serve him..

I haven’t figured this out yet, and it wasn’t part of the talk, but one of the four groups of Jews active in Jesus’s day (Essenes—the only ones not specifically mentioned in the Bible, in contrast to Pharisees, Sadducees, and a political type sometimes called Zealots) is described by Bart Ehrman as Jews who didn’t think or carry on as though their home were in this world, but in the next. They lived on earth, of course, but didn’t feel they belonged. They tended to hole up in separate colonies, where they hubbubed with each other. This so reminds one of an uptick over the last 2 or 3 decades of those partaking of emblems, although they do not fit the “profile” (faithful Christians with a long track record of faith and works) that you wonder what is going on. Not all of these ones remain in the congregation. There are some who depart, like Essenes themselves, and thereafter express concerned that their anointed status is not more widely recognized.

Or speaker next talked about his home life as a teen. He does this a lot and most in the circuit have come to feel they know his father. The telephone would ring. They didn’t have each one his own smart phone like people do today, he said. There was one phone in the house. He, our speaker, said how he always hoped it was one particular person, one especially sweet someone. Dad would always pick up the phone. By his tone and initial words, our speaker knew the call was not for him. It was for dear old dad. Thereafter, he didn’t have any interest in it—it wasn’t for him. He certainly had no need of asking his Dad—was the call really for him? much less reassuring him that the call was or questioning him on how he knew it was.

This is the same dad who played it cool when our speaker said how, as a teen, he had announced he would no longer go to meetings because they were repetitious. The old man took it in stride. The son was relieved. He had no idea that it would go so well.

That evening he even made the boy peanut butter sandwiches. The kid loved peanut butter sandwiches, and Dad didn’t pinch pennies with the peanut butter, as he sometimes did, to say nothing of the jam.

The next day the boy made his own peanut butter sandwich, as he did each day. “What are you doing?!” Dad asked incredulously, as though the boy has taken leave of his senses. He was not satisfied with the boy’s answer. “I forbid you to eat that sandwich,” he decreed, with all of his dadhood authority.

Of course, the problem was that it was the same old food he’d eaten yesterday—it was repetitive. And with that, Dad reasoned the boy back to the meetings. He might have made the kid go back on any account, until the boy turned of age, and was off on his own. That’s what parents do. If you do not teach your child, it does not mean that they grow up free and unencumbered, and, when of age, select their own values from the rich cornucopia of life. No. All it means is that someone else will teach them. Why should a parent relinquish that God-given responsibility?

He spins a yarn like this from his boyhood each time he comes, and he comes every 6 months. He is our circuit overseer and how we snagged him as our Memorial speaker I haven’t a clue.

Everyone greeted him on the Zoom squares beforehand. How are you doing? they wanted to know. “I’ll feel better after an hour,” he said. He was just making polite humble banter. But I took him at his word. “If even Jack is nervous,” I said, “what hope is there for rest of us?” Jack is a gifted speaker.

Preaching Jesus was no picnic in the first century. “Are you speaking of that fellow that they executed?” someone would say. “He’s the savior of the world?” That’s just plain idiocy, thought the non-Jew. The Jews would think it beyond idiocy—they would think it blasphemy, for they would recall the Torah verse of how anyone hung on a stake was accursed by God. (Deuteronomy 21:22-23)

Luke Timothy Johnson tells how early Christians had to overcome their “cognitive dissonance” on that point. Paul, the apostle, tells how he approached Corinth “in weakness and in fear and with much trembling” because he knew they would regard him as a snake oil salesman. (1 Corinthians 2:3) But only Bart Ehrman, the Bible-thumper who became an anti-Bible thumper but you can still see the Bible thumper in the anti-Bible thumper, actually presents him as a snake-oil salesman—Paul the itinerant preacher competing with hundreds of other itinerant preachers, each trying to yank the narrative of Christ his own way per his own “theology”—each concerned primarily with saving his own rear end from fire in the hereafter.

When Bart takes up the challenge of presenting Jesus as Messiah to that world, he likens it to presenting David Koresh as messiah to the modern world. “David Koresh—the man who abused children and stockpiled weapons? He’s the messiah?” he anticipates modern reaction. Why does he make such a dumb comparison? I get it that either one is supposed to be shocking, but still...

When you tell an illustration, you’re supposed to make sure all aspects of it line up with the subject—otherwise someone will be sure to spot the discordant part and throw out the entire illustration in consequence. Here the discordant part is glaring. Did Jesus abuse children? Did Jesus stockpile weapons? His “he who lives by the sword dies by the sword” is among the best-known adages on the planet.

There’s no way Bart can’t know this. How can one not conclude that he has so little regard for the subject that he just doesn’t care? Even Mark Twain, reputed atheist with some of the most scathing invectives ever uttered on religion, never had an unkind word for Jesus. The problem, according to Twain, was that nobody followed him. “There has only been one Christian,” he wrote. “They caught and killed him—early.” But trashing Christ is all in a day’s work for Bart.

Luke Timothy Johnson and Bart Ehrman both teach religion courses for the Great Courses lecture series. Their topics aren’t exactly the same but there’s plenty of overlap—they both cover the spread of Christianity in the first few centuries after his death. Comparing the two approaches reveals all the difference between a violin and a fiddle—the style is so different that it’s hard to believe the instrument is the same. Luke follows a traditional religious approach, Bart the historical critical approach. Luke examines his subject from within, Bart examines it from without. Luke looks for points of agreement. Bart looks for points of disharmony. Luke’s take is how early Christians complement. Bart’s take is on how they compete—just like organisms do in the survival-of-the-fittest evolutionary world.

Luke isn’t keen on the historical-critical approach as he acknowledges that it dominates religious study at the university level these days—send your child there so they can break down his or her faith (my words, not his). He cites David Strauss, an early advocate of that approach, who observes that “critical historiography can only deal with events in human times and space.”  Therefore, as Luke Johnson restates it, “the historian cannot take up anything having to do with the transcendent, or the supernatural, the historian cannot talk about the miraculous birth of Jesus, his miracles, his walking on the water, his transfiguration, his resurrection from the dead, and so forth.

“Well, fair enough. The historian can’t talk about those things, but that methodological restraint of Strauss very quickly becomes implicitly an epistemological denial, that is ‘the historian cannot talk about these things, therefore they are not real.’”

Exactly! It is as though a mechanic approaches an ailing car with a toolbox equipped only with wrenches. Finding a screwdriver is needed, he does not  reproach himself for not bringing one. Rather, he declares the problem unsolvable. Helpful as science is, there are times when it wouldn’t know a fact if it choked on one.

Back to Luke: “And so...the narrative of Jesus and the biblical story simply gets eliminated, [with] each item looked at through the political agenda of the writer—what was [this or that writer] trying to accomplish, rather than, ‘How is God speaking to us?’” Sure enough, when Bart tackles subjects as Jesus’ miraculous birth, his miracles, and his resurrection, he concludes that they cannot be proven scientifically. Duh.

The mother of all obtuseness appears when Bart examines the reason behind Christian persecution in the first century. Rome burned, the populace suspected Nero of setting the fire (to clear the way for urban renewal) and to deflect blame from himself, he redirected it to the Christians, who were hunted down and killed in the most heinous ways. Bart’s conclusion: “So Christians weren’t persecution for being Christian—they were persecuted for arson!”

Bart leaves untouched the 800-pound question behind the arson charge: “What was it about Christians that made them such perfect scapegoats?” It doesn’t occur to him to go there, though it would anyone else. Why didn’t Nero blame the Mafia, the spies from Egypt, the fortune tellers, the crazies, or a host of more likely suspects?

His obtuseness is heightened by the fact that Tacitus tells him the answer—and it doesn’t strike him as significant enough to mention. According to that Roman historian, Christians were “convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city, as of hating the human race.” How can Bart possibly miss that?

It’s not as though are so many sources that this one fell through the cracks. There are only four contemporary historians that even mention Christianity—Tacitus, Pliny the younger, Philo, and Josephus—and none of them write more than a paragraph or so. Christianity was a movement of the lower classes, and then, as now, the doings of such people are beneath the notice of the chroniclers.

No, Bart is just obtuse to the spiritual nature of his subject. His obsession with historical and scientific facts causes him to overlook the only FACT that matters—early Christians were regarded as radicals—yes, call them ‘extremists’—who were “hating the human race.” That is the absurdity that bears looking into, not the technicalities of the arson charge. Why in the world would Jesus followers—the ones who heeded his command to not take to the sword—be thought haters of the human race? The answer is very close to the reason Jehovah’s Witnesses are persecuted today in Russia, and are targets of general disapproval in most other lands.

Of course, their pacifism means non-participation in war efforts, and neutrality bumps it up a notch to not supporting in any way the war effort. That will always put you on the black list of a nationalistic world that demands everyone stay on the same page—“when we say ‘It’s war, that means you applaud!” But the distaste is for reasons more basic than that.

Luke Timothy Johnson observes how Christians “would not even perform the minimal political gesture of offering a pinch of incense to the gods.” This is because the gesture was religious to them. To everyone else, it was “political”—not a big deal. Why could they not grasp the Christian point of view?

The polytheistic world back then had no problem with Christians bringing in another god—not in itself. There was always room at the table for another god—pull up a chair. The problem was that once Jehovah was seated at the table, he ordered all the other gods away. None of the other gods were so possessive. All took it for granted that you worshipped many, and even when some human (such as the empiror) claimed divine status, it was not a problem for anyone other than the Christians (and Jews).

That situation isn’t exactly analogous to JWs and the flag salute? Anyone else will do it. Outright scoundrels and traitors will do it with fingers crossed behind their backs. Only Jehovah’s Witnesses read a violation of the Ten Commandments into it. “You must not make for yourself a carved image or a form like anything that is in the heavens above or that is on the earth underneath or that is in the waters under the earth. You must not bow down to them nor be induced to serve them, because I Jehovah your God am a God exacting exclusive devotion.” (Exodus 20:4-5) Though the U. S. Supreme Court has acquiesced to Witness interpretation, that does nothing to garner them acceptance in the popular mind.

“I Jehovah your God am a God exacting exclusive devotion,” says the verse. “There you go again,” said Ronald Reagan to Jimmy Carter, calling him on an attitude out of sync with the changing times and winning the election partly on the strength of that line. When the popular mood favors inclusiveness, it does not help to follow a God who requires “exclusive devotion.” It caused Christians to sit out events of life that others followed as a matter of routine, and that dependably annoys people.

Bart points out that Christians were reproached for dividing families—just as Jehovah’s Witnesses are today, and just as Jesus counseled would be the case. “Do not think I came to bring peace to the earth; I came to bring, not peace, but a sword,” he says. “For I came to cause division, with a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” As a practical matter, Christianity that strives to stay true to Jesus’ words will do that.

The “haters of the human race” charge becomes easier to envision in view of Jesus’ words above. Sitting out routine events in life based on “exclusive devotion” simply gets people’s dander up. Kicking back at such charges, the same as Jehovah’s Witnesses must do today, Paul points out, “We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one.” (2 Corinthians 7:2) The same undercurrent of “victimhood” so popular today finds its counterpart back then. “There is nothing new under the sun.” Christians stood so apart from routine areas of life, choosing the company of each other instead unless it was to spread their faith, that they were thought to throw sand in the gears of community life.

Why doesn’t Bart, who enmeshes himself in the gears of “science,” see that? He describes the executions of early Christian martyrs. In many cases, Roman officials gave them every chance to recant, pleaded with them to recant, patiently tried to persuade them that offering a pinch of incense to the emperor was too tiny a gesture to be concerned about, and—incredibly (considering his evangelical background), Bart sides with the Romans and expresses amazement that the martyrs could be so stubborn. “Why, when they had so much to offer this world, would they be so eager to leave it?” is the gist of one of his review questions.

Should you want to read up on how the Bible canon was assembled, either of these two writers and lecturers will get the job done. However, Bart with his atheistic point of view, is relentlessly annoying, and Luke, with his devotional point of view, is unobjectionable. Ditto if you want to read up on the early church “fathers” and apologists. Watchtower publications are light on those topics. The canon is explored in places as the Scriptures Inspired book the Insight book, but Bart or Luke expands it into much greater detail. And Watchtower articles on the early apologists are downright sparse, and tend to focus on what they got wrong.

I rather like how Luke Johnson puts it: “I think there is perhaps no greater evidence of Christianity’s success as a religion, that is, as a movement quite apart from imperial sponsorship and the politics of empire than these ancient versions from lands extending from present day Iran, Central Asia, Syria, Egypt, and Turkey, up into Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Western Europe. Something in the Bible must have spoken to all of these far-flung people and touched them in some fashion, not only to the dukes and the nobles and the bishops, but also the ordinary people who seemed eagerly to receive the word in their own languages. Indeed it may be an oblique but very real compliment to the energy and the power of Christianity in the first millenium of its existence that so many peoples in so many lands found these odd stories from ancient Palestine and the Greco-Mediterranean world of the first century to be both compelling and convincing.”

Yes, it is wordy. Yes, you half expect him to say, “All roads lead to heaven.” Yes, he may grumble when he finds out you don’t do the trinity, and discard your claim to Christianity on that account. Yes, when he says it was dangerous to be a Bible translator in the Middle Ages, he never says why—in his own way he is just as prone to ignore the 800 lb gorilla as is Bart—but since he does speak appreciatively of spiritual things we’ll let it slide. At any rate, I’ll take him in a heartbeat over Bart. The latter irritates me, though possibly not on purpose.

I always felt a little bad for Pilate. He tried to free Jesus. He really did—the four Gospel accounts make that very clear—declining only to fall on his own sword for him. For a military leader that’s not bad. It is not promising that when he says (and displays) that he is washing his hands of the blood of Jesus, the enemies of the Lord shout: “Let his blood come upon us and upon our children.” (Matthew 27:25)

Partly to divert attention from the actions of those religious leaders, who after all, have descendants, history has cranked up the volume on Pilate’s (who does not) vileness. In time, it became almost politically incorrect to connect Jesus’ death with those leaders. However, when Mel Gibson, director of the gory film The Passion—which I have never seen, though it was almost required viewing for evangelicals, I am told (I can take the Gospel’s word for it that it was gory) was asked whether it was the Jews (not really them, but their leaders at the time) who killed Jesus, he replied: “Well, it wasn’t the Scandinavians.”

There was a book long ago recommended to me by an older sister in the congregation—a historical novel titled simply ‘Pontus Pilate.’ It followed Pilate’s exploits through life. It presented everything from his point of view. It made him not unlikable at all, and its portrayal of Jesus was completely believable, though when it later moved on to consider reports of Paul, it presented him as a loony fanatic that many would not be able to stand for too long—it wasn’t as I picture him at all. Now I spot a review of that book here:

Anyway, along comes someone on Twitter named Lee to challenge me over Pilate’s actions per the Bible accounts Naw, Pilate wouldn’t have done that, he says, because he was rotten as can be without a shred of decency—a tyrant who ruled with an iron fist. Besides, the Gospel accounts are hooey, and the Watchtower scholarship is nil—full of insults this fellow is. Presently, he reveals that his source is Bart Ehrman.

Now, Bart exists for the purpose of destroying people’s faith—or at best, transferring it from faith in God to faith in man. That’s not in his job description, of course, but it is the effect of him doing his job. He sits at some university chairing the Religious Studies department, and students sign up for his courses thinking they will increase their knowledge of the Bible—how can that be a bad thing? He teaches them that it is—that is, if they regard the book a source of faith. If they just regard it critically, that is fine with him, but if they think they can extract faith from it, he works to disabuse them of that notion.

Rather than the common sense view that the four gospels are written by four credible sources covering the same events more or less like four newspapers might cover the same events, each supplying details that the others leave out, he presents them as warring factions each trying to repackage Jesus after their own image. I remember decades ago giving the public talk ‘The Harmony of the Gospels’ and remarking how well it is that Matthew supplements Mark, because otherwise you might think that the first time Peter and John ever laid eyes on Jesus, they dropped everything to follow him after just a single sentence, which makes no sense at all. Matthew’s account makes clear they already knew each other well, and so Jesus’ saying “Come be my follower,” is just an invitation into a more intensive ministry.

Bart presents Mark’s version as though they really do abandon everything first time they see him!—how can anyone be so stupid? I’ll know I’ve arrived as a minister when I can invite people to study the Bible as Witnesses do, and they say as though in a trance “Must...follow...Tom” as they leave home and hearth, with their lawn mower still running! Bart thinks that according to Mark it actually happened that way!—since he thinks Mark’s purpose is to present Jesus as the mesmerizing miracle worker. You know, it would help if he hadn’t had come from an evangelical background where they believe all sorts of things that make little sense, so if he pats himself on the back at breaking free from that—well, who can blame him? If only his Bible knowledge had been well grounded in the first place.

So Lee has read Bart, and he thinks he thereby knows more than anyone else. He says: “As far as I know there are no non-Biblical accounts of this practice (freeing a prisoner, such as Pilate offered with Barabbas) and the Romans tended not to free insurrectionists to go round causing trouble all over again. I find it interesting that Barabbas means "son of the father" which is a good description of Jesus. A natural conclusion to draw is that this is a literary device and not reporting of real events.”

I replied: “It is also a good description of anyone. Who can say? The account is specific enough and (atypically) in all four gospels. I see no need to blow it off as an invention. Maybe it was one of those deals that politicians are wont to pull every four years—releasing a few prisoners sometimes because they deserve it and/or sometimes because it makes them look good.”

He tipped his hand more, and this time revealed that his source was Bart—linking to a post Bart had written on the topic, along with his own: “Why look for chinks of light to defend a sectarian interpretation rather than look to the most reasonable explanation of available evidence?”

It’s time to reveal to this character that I, too, know of the great, educated, and all-knowing Bart. I replied:

“Bart says that our sources for Pilate are almost nil, yet it is still enough for him to know Pilate through and through!? I think my take is more reasonable. Leaders throw out a bone or two today. Why not then? Maybe Barabbas was old and toothless by then, all the fight out of him. As to Bart’s recent book, Heaven and Hell, I have written that any JW could have written the bulk of it.

He responded in a flurry of tweets. When that happens, and if you want to continue, don’t respond to each one. Just because he thinks in a muddle, it does not mean you have to. Pick just one. He bombarded me with (I’ll number them—they all came at once:

1. Given that little time was spent prior to execution, if the Barabbas character was old and wrinkly that doesn't seem to have stopped his sedition and would not prevent his execution.

2. Yes, from what I've heard of Bart discussing it, I also noted how similar to JW's a lot of his position is. It seemed odd when he was attacked without being named in the March 2020 JW broadcast. [not that I noticed, but then if he was not named, who can say?]

3. I'm not sure where you get the idea he's been cribbing JW teachings. An annihilationist hell has been a feature of some Christian denominations for hundreds of years. Martin Luther and Tyndale for example. It is also common among Millerite offshoots including the JW's.

4. "the scholarship of the Watchtower must be elevated . . .  their critics generally assume that they have none." No, just largely only carried out at Bethel whilst the rank and file are asked not to dig too deeply into the secular scholarship the writing department accesses.

5. JW writing department treatment of scholarship is more to give a partial presentation to fit pre-conceived theology, not to ignore scholarship altogether.

6. JW writing department treatment of scholarship is more to give a partial presentation to fit pre-conceived theology, not to ignore scholarship altogether.

I was tempted to respond to #3. What is an “annihilationist hell” other than no hell at all?—which is what Jehovah’s Witnesses teach, and almost nobody else! People just make up terms they hope you don’t know to make themselves look smart.

Instead, I decided to ignore this point, along with his other insults, and stay on topic—his appeal to Bart for authority: I replied: “Bart has only two sources regarding Pilate [Philo and Josephus], both Jewish upper class intellectuals, both with every reason to deeply resent occupying Rome. Why does it not occur to you or Bart that they just might not be unbiased sources? The Gospel account is probably more unbiased and true.

He shifted into high gear spinning theological terms: “Did you adopt this view of Johanine neutrality and historicity after a careful meta-analysis of scholarly work or after adopting a position of Biblical infallibility without such a scholarly exercise?”

“Come, come,” said I. “Your argument is weak. Don’t just keep flailing away nor “pull rank” with PhDs as though only they can think. Lots of Trump people are smart, too. Will you trust two of them to give an honest appraisel of Biden? Or vice versa? The gospel writers are more reliable, and infinitely more detailed. Brilliant and learned as your two sources may be, they wrote exceedingly little, not just on Pilate, but on the entire Christian movement.”

He next revealed that he had no idea what he was talking about, and didn’t really care. He just thought he could score a few points:

He: “I've no idea what Philo said about the Christian movement and doubt Josephus wrote what is attributed to him. How do you judge the reliability of NT writers accounts of miracles?”

See how he sweeps aside the fact that he doesn’t really know anything, and presses on with the fight anyway. It’s not happening on my watch. He already knows how I feel about the reliability of NT writers because he knows I am one of Jehovah’s Witnesses—he just wants to start a fight after awing me with credentials he does not have. There are only four brief “real time” mentions of first-century Christianity apart from the Bible itself. He had mentioned two—Josephus and Philo. I asked him if he knew the other, too. [They are Tacitus and Pliny the Younger] Of course, he did not—or at any rate I never heard from him again.

I thus never got the opportunity to point out that the reason there are only four extremely brief contemporary mentions of first-century Christianity outside of the New Testament itself is that the movement was (and is) one of the common people—who are ever beneath the notice of the “educated” class.

Bart comes from an evangelical background. In his blog, he speaks poignantly of the tragedy of losing his faith, something that happened once he began to examine the Bible through “critical thinking.” 

He never had a firm foundation to stand on. I would lose my faith, too, if I had to uphold all the nonsense that is part and parcel of church teaching. One can almost feel sorry for him—but one does not, because he does not feel sorry for himself. He has a good gig going—top selling author, nifty website with a paywall that donates to charity, a reputation that prompts the Great Courses Lecture series to engage him as a professor, chair of a university religion department, where he destroys the faith of his students—but since it was founded mostly on the doctrines of churches, it was barely defensible in the first place. No, he has a good gig. Nobody has asked me to chair a Great Courses series.

If not atheist, he certainly is hard-agnostic, unless he has had a recent change of heart. I often wonder what would have happened if those now atheist had been presented accurate Christian teachings first—would they have gone atheist in that case? A naive me once assumed that the answer would be no. 

Sometimes it has worked that way, but these are crazy times, and if you keep up with atheist writings, you find that they are likely to detest JWs most of all! It does not help that JWs have “accurate” Bible teachings. The allure of breaking free from any “control” is just too enticing to be countered by a fresh look at Bible teachings. There is no way that those on the “cramped and narrow road” are not going to be derided as “cult” members by those on the broad and spacious one. This is so predictable that I kick myself for not having predicted it long before—it is so obvious. 

To break free of “control” holds irresistible appeal today, and the atheists add to the list of who does it (and even put foremost) those who would claim to represent God, as our brothers do, and they lambasted them for “controlling”  people by that means. You might think they would look upon Witnesses with admiration for such things as eliminating racism among their midst, or not engaging in physical violence on any account—least of all that of the government trying to sign them up for the latest war.

Alas, to them, JWs are the worst of the lot, because most churches have watered down “speaking in God’s name” to “God works in mysterious ways,” and have pretty much learned to roll with whatever happens, being content to add a smiley “God” emoji to events. Most have made their peace with the world—they seek to hopefully modify it for the better. Atheists are vested in the world even more so, and think the view of JWs far too extreme—even “murderous”—that God means to replace it. 

From the ranks of atheists come those most likely to present the picture that obedience “to men” is essential if you are a JW, how they are under enormous pressure always from top leaders, and how they terrify children with expectations of Armaggedon. (How about when Newsweek surveys the world scene, and presents the magazine cover “What the *@#! Is Next?” I countered to one of them.)

The “obedience” that JWs are expected to render is no more than following directions of the teacher, the coach, the mentor, the employer, the counselor, the traffic cop—something that was once the most unremarkable thing in the world, but is now presented as selling out one’s soul. JWs have not changed—the world has. One may look no farther than it’s collective response to Covid 19 to see what chaos follows. Mark Benioff, the Salesforce founder, the fellow who purchased Time Magazine, has stated that if everyone had masked up for just three weeks, the virus would have been defeated. Of course, this is what JWs have done, because being obedient to authority is not an issue for them, but the illness is out of control today because the world ridicules obedience and challenges the authority of any who would advance it. The very first sign that this would escalate to disaster occurred very early on—when toilet paper sold out, despite knowledge that the virus doesn’t hit people that way. I told Hassan, the CultExpert, he of the“FreedomofMind” hashtag, that my people have behaved far more responsibly than his—you don’t think some will use their “freedom of mind” to tell the government where they can go with their “rules?”

It doesn’t matter if the world’s obsession with “independence” ends in disaster—as it surely will—as it is with Covid 19. As one tweet puts it: “Folks want to believe this pandemic is nearing an end because they’re tired of living in a broken world. But I fear we are just at the beginning, and that we’ve squandered the first six months with our bickering.” You know they will squander the next six months, too—you just know it. That is the way the world works.

To be free of “control” is just too strong a pull for anything to be otherwise. Those on the broad and spacious road—that’s what makes it broad and spacious, ones on it listen to no one but themselves—will invariably present those on the cramped and narrow road as manipulated by a cult. That should have occurred to me long ago.

When the song “Give us Courage” was released at the 2018 Be Courageous Regional Conventions, an accompanying video depicted soldiers in full military gear closing in on entirely ordinary and manifestly harmless Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were doing no more than minding their own business. “How cult-like!” said the ridiculers. “What is it with these people and their “persecution complex?”

In fact, the video prefigures events that have come to pass, as absurdly unlikely as they might seem. After all, arresting entirely harmless people is crazy in itself. But what multiplies the craziness 100-fold is to arrest them in full military gear including assault rifles. Yet this is exactly what was done in the Voronezh Region of Russia on July 13, 2020, as 110 homes of Jehovah’s Witnesses were raided—a new record. Congregation members were forced to the ground with their faces pressed into the floor. At least two were beaten.

Many of these persons are elderly. They include women and children. There is no possibility of them offering resistance and everybody knows it. They are almost the only group whose entire history demonstrates that under no circumstances will they resort to violence. Yet they are arrested as you would terrorists.

Assuming that arrests are called for (a ridiculous assumption that we will let pass so as to pursue a greater point), why would arrests be made in such a brutal manner? Two reasons present themselves,

1) Outright hate.

2) Saving face.

If you declare people “extremists” and then arrest them as you would a jaywalker, you are only making yourself look a liar. You are only proving that they are not extremists at all, and that you well know it. Better to arrest them in military style. You may look unhinged in that event, but at least you appear to be acting in accord with your convictions, plus you are creating maximum terror against gentle people. It’s a little like beating up on girls—in a rapidly escalating game of hardball.

This calls to mind how Abraham Lincoln would say that he was not smart enough to lie—for if he did, he knew he would have to adjust every subsequent statement and action to accord with that first lie if he was to retain an ounce of credibility. Having swallowed the lie that Witnesses are extremists, Russian police forces now have to act as though they are.

The Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses foresaw this. It is the most unlikely scenario in the world, and yet they foresaw it. Does this “prove” that Jehovah is with the Witness Governing Body—to transfer Brother Glock’s remarks to more readily adaptable content? Sometimes all you need do with a statement like that from Glock is to show a little flexibility. Like the boy that was spanked by his Dad and protested that he hadn’t committed the offense for which he was being punished. “Well—in that case, it’s for something that you did do for which you should have been punished but weren’t,” dear old dad said.

The world of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia is turned upside down. Even raids that do not result in their arrest result in the confiscation of belongings—typically including tablets and phones. Still, they take some satisfaction in knowing that their staying faithful under trial calls worldwide attention to the Christian course they pursue. Theirs is somewhat the response of Christians in the first century, who upon being released from punishment, “rejoiced that they had been counted worthy to be dishonored for the sake of his name.” (Acts 5:41) It is not the type of witness that most would choose, but it is a witness; it does bring to life how “you will be hated by all the nations on account of my name.” (Matthew 24:9)

I do not look forward to the experience, and living in the West as I do, it may not come. Human rights people carry much more popular sway in the West than they do in Russia, where the very concept is suspiciously regarded as a Western intrusion—so says Chivchalov. Even in Russia—“Look, the Devil will throw some of you into prison,” the apostle John warns—not all of you. Even Bart Ehrman apparently speaks for the academic community when he states that Christian martyrs of the first century probably numbered in the hundreds—they did not include everyone.

But so often in life we cannot choose our “assignment.” The trick is to be like Paul, who knew how to live regardless of his circumstances. (Phil 4:12) All reports are that the Russian brothers are facing their persecutors with enormous resolve, courage, and integrity. I pray that should it ever become my turn, I will just as readily follow their example.

See: I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses—Searching for the Why

At the meeting yesterday I commented that, with a certain history of anxiety issues in the control tower, if I were to start partaking of the emblems, I would expect people to say, ‘Well, he is a little that way.’ I mean, I wouldn’t expect people to just lap it up. Fortunately, there is no way on God’s green earth that I am ever going to be one of the anointed because it is on God’s green earth that I savor living forever and can’t begin to imagine whatever I would do in the heavenly realm.

Another remark was given of someone from his Bethel days, awoken by a roommate who said he thought he might be anointed. ‘If you only think it, you’re not. Go back to sleep’ was the reply.

I also said that, as a practical matter, I never ever bring the subject of anointed up in the ministry, since it involves so very few people. To do so seems like being one of those policy wonks eternally obsessed over what is going on in Washington, something that they at best have 1/200,000,000 input. Why go there?

Also, though 90% of Bart Ehrman’s remarks are infuriating, because while displaying impressive command of background facts, certain basic concepts seem completely foreign to him (such as ‘worshipping God’)—still, here and there one can spot an insight. One of them was his definition of Gnostics. Now, I had heard of the term, and I knew it had to do with ‘knowledge’ but I didn’t know what sort of knowledge and I had made up for that lack by assuming wrong, thinking of what we today call knowledge—you know, the stuff you acquire in school. Instead, the ‘knowledge’ that Gnostics had was that they didn’t belong in this world—it just didn’t feel right to them—they belonged somewhere else, and if you shared this similar ‘knowledge,’ you were one of them. Tell me if this doesn’t describe almost exactly ones who claim, rightly or wrongly, that they are anointed today.

Too, Bart points out that the Gnostics were not a separate Christian community but they were interspersed in existing congregations, again like anointed today. Of course, this does a little bit fly in the face of the current WT view that all Christians back then were anointed. But it has already been pointed out that the early Christian community very soon exceeded 144K, so that view is not exactly airtight. One easy way to resolve matters is to hold that the heavenly calling was indeed the priority back then, just after the Christ instituted the congregation, but the message still attracted people who sensed that it was the latest worship development from God, that this is where they belonged, and that they would therefore benefit even if every single little thing didn’t dovetail.

That God should ask Abraham to sacrifice his own son makes no sense at all and is even offensive—even barbaric. ‪It only makes sense when seen as forerunner for God sacrificing his own son in order to redeem others. It is all the more pointed when Abraham offers up the supplied ram In place of his son, calling to mind how God offers up a son in place of another.

Now after this the true God put Abraham to the test, and he said to him: “Abraham!” to which he replied: “Here I am!” Then he said: “Take, please, your son, your only son whom you so love, Isaac, and travel to the land of Moriah and offer him up there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will designate to you.”....  (Genesis 22:1-2)

Then Isaac said to his father Abraham: “My father!” He replied: “Yes, my son!” So he continued: “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” To this Abraham said: “God himself will provide the sheep for the burnt offering, my son.” (vs 7-8)

But Jehovah’s angel called to him from the heavens and said: “Abraham, Abraham!” to which he answered: “Here I am!” Then he said: “Do not harm the boy, and do not do anything at all to him, for now I do know that you are God-fearing because you have not withheld your son, your only one, from me.” At that Abraham looked up, and there just beyond him was a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son.  (vs 11-13)

Bart Ehrman (my new villain) is doing his best to aggravate me, with some success. He says that after Jesus’ death, his disciples (and the more learned others, as though the original were dummies—“peasants” he calls them, with the implicit understanding that peasants are too stupid to derive “theology”) who had not a clue that Jesus would be put to death, tried to afterward rework it into a “victory” by “reinterpreting” passages of Hebrew scripture written for who knows what reason and applying them to Jesus. Doubtless, this passage is an example of that.

In fact, that is pretty much what happened. Bart gets this part right, but it is the air he emits of them pulling the scam of the ages that rankles. It is the air of examining intently all the pieces but never thinking to put them together, and being thoroughly obtuse when someone else does—of being unimpressed, possibly because of not wanting them to come together that way—and so it all goes over his head as he obsesses with the individual pieces. 

Going through this fellow’s Great Courses lectures, the feeling grows on me that, having ascended to the ranks of “scholar” himself, he is kind to scholars everywhere—both now and of those in early Christian times. When he gushes on about how some scholars think this, but other scholars think that, I am reminded exactly of why the lowly people were astounded at Jesus means of teaching—he didn’t teach as the scribes, constantly quoting each other, but taught as though one with authority. 

When Jesus finished these sayings, the effect was that the crowds were astounded at his way of teaching, for he was teaching them as a person having authority, and not as their scribes. (Matthew 7:28-29)

He oohs and ahhh over “scholars” of the first century, too, and the feeling grows with me that it accounts for his treating Pharisees and Saducees with such respect. He doesn’t at all share Jesus’ ‘narrowmindedness’ in being so hard on them. Saducess are ‘the ruling class,’ so you know that is going to impress Bart, who now “rules” himself at the university, being deferred to. And the Pharisees? Just a religiously devout group of Jews who were serious about keeping the Law—what in the world is wrong with that? Why criticize people for their “theology?” he appears to believe.

Did the Jewish leaders scheme for Jesus’ execution? Well—yes, he concedes, but he passes it off as though it is just a few bad apples in an otherwise sincere bunch, much like a renegade politician storming as though a bull in a china shop. Maybe not even that. Jesus antagonized them, after all, by leaving the hills of Galilee, where his carrying on could be ignored, and coming right into Jerusalem, right into the temple and disrupting the established respectable religion, as though Bart would maintain he had no right to do this—he should have recognized their turf and conducted himself with proper decorum.

Besides, those Jewish leaders didn’t kill Jesus—Pilate did, and since Pilate comes from an authoritarian faction that no longer exists and can thus be disrespected without offending anyone important, Bart does just that. Pilate had no concern whatsoever for justice, Bart maintains. His job was to get rid of rabble-rousers, like Jesus, before they disturbed the peace and upset the status quo. He did it all the time and had no qualms about killing people. Life and death was in his hand—he was a tyrant who afforded Jesus a “trial” that lasted maybe two minutes before ridding himself and the empire of him.

In fact, one who reads the accounts of Jesus trial can’t help but be struck with how hard Pilate works to release Jesus. He knows that the preacher popular with the crowds is being framed. He also knows that the framers are trying to bully he himself, and he resents it. He only yields to those Jewish religious thugs when they force him to choose between Jesus and himself. “For this reason Pilate kept trying to find a way to release him, but the Jews shouted: “If you release this man, you are not a friend of Caesar. Everyone who makes himself a king speaks against Caesar,” they point out darkly at John 19:12. That took the wind out of him. He doesn’t need those community leaders reporting him as a traitor to Caesar. He doesn’t need to be painted as though a party to insurrection. Better to grant the scoundrels what they want. So he does—but he is furious about it. He posts a sign above the stake that Jesus is impaled upon: “The king of the Jews.”

“However, the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate: “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that he said, ‘I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered: “What I have written, I have written.” (vs 21-22) He was so fed up with them. Granted, he didn’t exactly trade away everything he had like the merchant finding the fine pearl, did he? But neither is he portrayed as callously indifferent to the sufferings of an innocent man or an eager participant of injustice.

Possibly Bart offloads all the blame on Pilate because he, as a leader of society, feels an obligation to facilitate other leaders getting along. He downplays the Jewish connection maybe because that might feed into current anti-semitism (not an invalid concern). Revise history if need be to pin in all on the evil Romans, who are all dead and gone. I’m not blind to the concern, but when Mel Gibson, director of ‘The Passion,’ was asked directly whether Jesus had been killed by the Jews, he replied: “Well, it wasn’t the Scandinavians.”

Probably—I do not know this for sure—but probably Bart will sweep all these ‘softening’ factors with regard to Pilate aside. I am on to his tricks, as he employs ‘critical analysis’ to define history the humanistic way that he wants it defined. He will, if I am correct, dismiss all these humanizing touches of Pilate for having failed the “criterion of contextual credibility.” Yes, the gospel accounts may say what they do about Pilate, ‘but it is not credible because we have determined—my fellow scholars and I—that the Romans were nothing but brutes. Some early Christian writer just made that up’—if there is one thing that defines Bart’s perception, it is that everyone spun the story of Jesus their own way for their own personal advantage to validate whatever they had settled upon doing.

Everything goes over Bart’s head! He is so exasperating! Everything is a power play with this guy—a struggle for dominance by the ones who have reached the top of their game—just as he has himself as a professor with dozens of books authored and GreatCourses itself bestowing greatness upon him, immortalizing him as the great instuctor in all matters of Judeo-Christian religion. He treats the ascension of Christianity to worldwide prominence as though a team reaching the Super Bowl, celebrating the victory of being best in the world, oblivious to trade-offs of players along the way. It’s okay for football teams to do this, but in the case of a faith it amounts to selling its soul. He doesn’t even notice it though, and if you point it out to him he will not think it particularly important. The point is that they reached the Super Bowl; with the acceptance of Constantine, Christianity became the most important religion in the whole wide world! Score!!!!

Now, I readily concede that this is a subjective piece—my take on Bart. But there is barely anything anywhere that is not. Everyone looks at things though their own subjective lens. It is completely a myth that we are primarily rational beings. It is enough to say that we are capable of reason, but to say that it dominates is just too much. We are creatures of emotion, and that emotion is molded by our experience and background. One is quickly struck by how often Bart maintains that “we can assume” this or “we can assume” that. In fact, we cannot assume any of it just because he does. He raises possibilities, but no more, and upon consideration of the big picture, not very likely possibilities. A person with different experience or different motivation will, if we are going to “assume” things, assume entirely different things. The ones most blind are often the ones who revel in their ‘critical thinking’ because they are ever apt to “assume” that they have a lock on the stuff. The heart reaches for what it wants and then charges the head with devising a convincing rationale for it. This lends the impression that the head is calling the shots, but it is the heart all along.

I focus on Bart so as to put a human face on things. I shouldn’t, and in other posts about Bart, I don’t. It is not Bart himself, but what he represents. It took me the longest time to recognize why the Watchtower seldom names villains. It is the play we are watching, not the actors in the play. You don’t have to know the names of the actors to follow the play—it can even be a distraction if you do. Besides, name a villain and you automatically create the impression that removing that villain will improve things. Instead, another actor instantly steps into the role—he has the part memorized—and the play continues with barely a hiccup.

“Yeah, well Tom, you’re just grousing because Bart sells tons more books than you, and he sells it with a machinery that you cannot match. He has editors and professional enablers and you can’t even manage to get all your typos out of all your scribblings! He gets a perch at the university and you have to fight off even many of your own people who think that whatever you are trying to do you are doing it wrong and should stop.”

Okay, okay, so there is something to that. It is the oldest story in the world. There is stuff that is readily lapped up because it aligns itself with mainstream goals and urges, and there is stuff that doesn’t. It was even true following that great trial in Jerusalem. Both Pilate and the Jewish religious leaders resumed their dignified strutting, their privileged walk only briefly jostled—and not very seriously. The lowly ones who put their trust in Jesus scratch their heads and wonder what just it was that happened. Only later do they think to revisit that drama of God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son.

The professor is up to his old tricks again and he calls to mind “that blaggart who uses the science of speech more to blackmail and swindle than teach”—teaching Christianity up there at the university. It is okay if you take it for what it is—a humanist approach to teaching Bible verse. But I can’t help but think that at least some of his students sign up imagining they will acquire what builds their relationship with God.

I think this because I took such courses myself back in my college days, as electives, with just that thought—that I would learn what would help me better know God. The courses were taught by a retired Southern Baptist clergyman of some stature. He joked at how, back in his seminary days, John was known as “the apostle to the idiots” for the simple language that characterize the writings attributed to him. I distinctly remember that when I later came in touch with Jehovah’s Witnesses, I very casually dropped the fact that there were four gospels—that way they would know that they weren’t just talking to any dunce but to someone who knew a thing or two about the Scriptures. In certain circles, you can know almost nothing yet walk around thinking yourself well informed.

Maddeningly, Professor Ehrman explains at considerable length how Jesus was an “apocalypticist” and how that identification must be understood to make any sense out of his life. There is nothing wrong with explaining that Jesus was an apocalypticist, but it is a little like explaining that a cop is a “malfeasance disruptor” and that the tenets of malfeasance disruption must be understood in other to grasp what might possibly motivate the cop to do what he does. As with all his lectures on biblical scripture, the professor sets aside the meat to chew on the rind and presumably gets his students to think that the rind is the meat.

I was assigned a student talk of dramatizing how one make a return visit using 2 Timothy 3:1-5, apocalyptic writings through and through, from the apostle Paul—though, if I recall correctly, not all “scholars” think that it was Paul who wrote the letter, maybe because  they don’t see him being too apocalyptic in other letters. I wasn’t crazy about the assignment. 2 Timothy 3:1-5 is a little tricky to use. It is such a long list of negative traits that you begin you feel you’re pummeling the householder going through them all.

I have developed my own way, which was not the one suggested on the program. Maybe it would be like the time when the school conductor said, “Actually, you didn’t really address the theme,” and I had replied, “Oh—I changed that,” which made him laugh uproariously because he had never heard of such a thing. Fortunately, in this case, the demands of the talk were not high and I fixed what I had on the fly to make it dovetail with the adjacent talks—three of them are supposed to go together as a progressive unit.

“But know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here.  For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, haughty, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, disloyal, having no natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness, betrayers, headstrong, puffed up with pride, lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God, having an appearance of godliness but proving false to its power; and from these turn away.”

I count 19 adjectives. That’s a lot. Sometimes I skip around to highlight just 3 or 4. Sometimes I point out that, since the verses have always been there and Jehovah’s Witnesses have been coming around for a long time, it used to be that if you read the passage and your household didn’t agree that they were true today more than in times past, there wasn’t much you could do about it—plainly, the verses are subjective. But each passing day, especially thanks to politics, makes it harder and harder to dismiss such verses as irrelevant. You can still do it, of course, but your nose sort of grows like Pinocchio.

“Why is it that you always have to think that things are getting worse?” one skeptic asked me, adding “what does that view do for you?” I replied that it helps me to explain why the Doomsday Clock was set at a few moments prior to midnight and not 10:30 AM. But I could have just said: “Because I am an apocalypticist.” That would have made the professor happy—for picking up on his lingo.

Jesus was a carpenter. So says the New Testament. The professor concurs that he probably was. He does not concur because the Bible writer says it was so. He mistrusts the writers to convey historical truth accurately—they are too busy changing the story to fit their own “theologies,” he maintains. Everything they say is suspect and must be verified by critical analysis.

As it turns out, Jesus being a carpenter passes the “criteria of dissimilarity” and for that reason the professor accepts it as probably valid. Nobody is going to lie about Jesus being a carpenter because that does not paint him in a flattering light. A liar would have made Jesus a lawyer, a noble, an esteemed teacher such as the professor himself—something more respectable. But he identifies Jesus as a carpenter and thus fesses up to something “dissimilar” to his own interests of making Jesus look good. It is a fine example of passing the “criteria of dissimilarity.”

I’m not sure how much of this wisdom I can stand. Professor Ehrman here reveals why he will misconstrue most everything of importance about Jesus. So much higher criticism reflects classism—one class looking down on the other. ‘Jesus followers would never own up to his being a carpenter unless he really was one because it is an embarrassment to be a carpenter’ is the operating assumption. Well, maybe it isn’t. Maybe the pecking order of society that the professor has internalized is not the grand ranking scheme of the cosmos. Maybe God thinks a carpenter is not such a loser for failure to climb to loftier heights in life. Maybe it is those lofty heights themselves that he disdains.

It is a little like when Mike Bloomberg says: "I could teach anybody—even people in this room so no offense intended—to be a farmer. It's a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.” Does he really seek to mitigate the “offense” he might cause by suggesting farming to his educated audience? Does the remark reveal something about farmers, or does it reveal something about Bloomberg? The little people were not happy to hear that the former mayor could teach any orangutan their job. It’s a four-year-old quote and arguably taken out of context—or does the actual insult extent to lathe operators, and indeed all who work with their hands?

I’ll bet also that Jesus being born in a stable would knock the “criteria of dissimilarity” ball right out of the park—you just know it would. It is so humiliating, supposes the higher critic—plainly any Bible writer worth his salt would love to say Jesus was born in the Jerusalem Hyatt—in the Presidential suite!—so if he embarrassingly lets slip that the stable was the place of birth, it is undoubtedly so.

In fact, if there is one guiding star of the Bible writers, it is that the pretentions of humans do not cut much ice with God. He shoves away the finest things of humankind just to show what he thinks of them. The stable is a fine place for the Savior to be born, for in the stable will be more of the people he favors: “Though Jehovah is high, he takes note of the humble, But the haughty he knows only from a distance,” says Psalm 138:6. That being the case, it is well to hang out where the humble are in preference to where haughty are, because the quality rubs off. The stable will do just fine.