 |
| My desk set-up, just in case I have to move it all I'll know how to put it back together. |
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Tuesday, December 10, 2013
The Five Gospels
Over the past few years, I've been reading a lot on the so-called Christian "Gnostic" Gospels. Not to completely rehash and to oversimplify, they were the doctrinal losing side in the early Jesus movement over the debate about what Jesus taught.
Ultimately when the canon was compiled, these teachings were outlawed and suppressed for 1700 years, but have recently been uncovered with ongoing scholarship being done on them.
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene was uncovered in the late 1800s, while the bulk of the writings were uncovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in the late 1940s, and finally the Gospel of Judas, after a long journey which nearly destroyed it, was first published in 2006.
Also to briefly rehash, I might think my interest in the Gnostic Gospels might be part of this future life resonance theory I play with. If I am angling for a rebirth in South Korea, if any at all, I'm confident that even if I'm born in a Christian environment such as South Korea, I will be able to find my way back on my path.
The texts are readily available, along with more and more books being written on them for anyone interested and not in the mind control of the church. Anyone who is intrigued by the question "There's more (than what a Roman emperor endorsed as the official teachings of Jesus)?" can now find and read about the early Jesus movement and the arguments and controversies over the teachings that were raging.
I imagine that even if I were raised as a Christian in a future life (assuming what I shouldn't assume – that reincarnation is linear in time), I would find my way to the Gnostic Gospels. I'm fairly confident it is in my karma to be inquisitive by nature and to be one of the people to ask, "There's more?!".
Me: "Well, what is it?"
Christian: "It's heresy, blasphemy"
"But Jesus taught it?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. Anyway it's wrong"
"Says who?"
"The church fathers"
"Oh. OK. Who were the church fathers?"
"I'm not sure. It has to do something with the Roman emperor Constantine who convened the Nicene Council. You can Google it"
"OK, I will"
"On the other hand, maybe you shouldn't"
Much of the Gnostic Gospels focuses on the hidden, esoteric spiritual interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, as opposed to the moralistic, institutional, authority-driven interpretation of the current canon. Today, as must have been the case in the early Jesus movement, they appeal to a completely different character and psychological/spiritual make-up than those who favored the straight-forward and direct, and even political, nature of what became the canon.
I was surprised recently to realize that I've never actually read the four canonical Gospels except in portions. I only realized it upon finding a book called The Five Gospels.
The Five Gospels was the result of a project in the late 80s/early 90s by a group called the Jesus Seminar, consisting of about 200 biblical scholars who rendered a modern, scholar-friendly translation of the four canonical Gospels from an original Greek manuscript, plus the gnostic Gospel of Thomas from a Coptic translation from Nag Hammadi.
They then set out to present a scholarly consensus over any quote attributed to Jesus and the likelihood that Jesus himself spoke those words. Consensual certainty that he said something is printed in bold red, certainty that he did not is printed in bold black; and pink and grey are used for weighted votes in between relative consensual certainty.
The reason they included the Gospel of Thomas is that it is simply comprised of alleged quotes by Jesus with no narrative context. Since the project was focused on what Jesus likely actually said, they deemed it appropriate to subject Thomas to the test.
I would say it's a flawed work, for sure, but still fascinating. The criteria for putting words into the mouth of Jesus are based on narrow presuppositions imposed by the seminar. The voting method over a period of years also results in inconsistencies, which the authors reveal in the commentary.
Actually, never having read the canonical gospels didn't mean much. Just growing up in the U.S., just about all of the stories were familiar. It doesn't matter if you're Christian or not, if you grow up in the U.S., you're bombarded with Christian references your whole life.
(Even in the subtlest ways. In high school, a group of friends were playing Trivial Pursuit. Two of the participants were brothers, Mark and John Smylie. The question was what are the four gospels of the New Testament. One of the brothers on the other team rattled off "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John", and we were all blown away how they knew that as easily as any of the rest of us could name The Beatles. He casually pointed to his brother, "John", pointed to himself "Mark, and our dad's a pastor, if we had two more brothers, they would have been Matthew and Luke". And that's how I learned the names of the four gospels culturally. The only Luke I knew prior was Skywalker, son ofVader Anakin)
One thing I found fascinating was that just about any familiar quotation, repeated ad infinitum in U.S. culture, was voted black. Jesus likely never said those quotes, but were attributed to him by members of the later movement trying to push their interpretation of what he taught.
This is a good place to note that I realize even though the Gnostic Gospels appeal to me, they also are iterations of positions in a fervent debate. I think they are right and the canon got it completely wrong, but there are billions of Christians who disagree (no doubt Christians who don't even want it discussed or out in the open and would prefer the suppression and censorship to continue).
Also, just reading the red quotations, this Jesus character strikes me as someone enlightened, imparting radical wisdom that was intended to shake the normative sensibilities and mores of the day. I agree with the assessment of scholars that Jesus wasn't into institution building.
That seems to indicate to me that if he were alive today, he would rail against the institution of the Christian church. He would rail against the conformity, control and conservatism of the church. A red quote widely attributed to Jesus can be directed to many Christians today: You point out the sliver in someone else's eye while ignoring the timber in your own.
He wasn't about placating people or making people feel good about being moral and righteous. He was about shaking things up. If you thought something and mindlessly accepted it as the norm, he would say something to disturb you.
Something the Jesus Seminar posits, which I have no comment on whatsoever but think is quite funny, is that he ate well and drank freely. I think they call him a glutton and a drunkard.
To Christians today, those are vices to be eschewed, but they make sense to someone trying to shake the norms of society. I think he did live under Jewish law because that was the water in which he was a fish, but I think he constantly pushed their boundaries to the extent that the law was being abused by temple authorities.
And even if he was glutton and a drunkard, his teachings understood correctly were good. They aimed toward liberation. I'd take a good teaching by a glutton and drunkard over a bad teaching by someone self-professed to be moral and righteous any day.
It seems to me natural now to be fascinated by Christianity, but it's not. I never was much interested in Christianity until the Gnostic Gospels. The vast majority of my exposure to Christianity was cultural – the devotional side of blind, uncritical faith which never resonated with me.
I did take a course at Oberlin which did critically cover the historical underpinnings of Christianity and I loved that course. Mostly because it didn't deal with the myth of Christianity, which is what most Christians today believe. Myth comprises the reality of most Christians because they for most part reject the scholarship, which aims at getting to the historical realities.
Ultimately when the canon was compiled, these teachings were outlawed and suppressed for 1700 years, but have recently been uncovered with ongoing scholarship being done on them.
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene was uncovered in the late 1800s, while the bulk of the writings were uncovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in the late 1940s, and finally the Gospel of Judas, after a long journey which nearly destroyed it, was first published in 2006.
Also to briefly rehash, I might think my interest in the Gnostic Gospels might be part of this future life resonance theory I play with. If I am angling for a rebirth in South Korea, if any at all, I'm confident that even if I'm born in a Christian environment such as South Korea, I will be able to find my way back on my path.
The texts are readily available, along with more and more books being written on them for anyone interested and not in the mind control of the church. Anyone who is intrigued by the question "There's more (than what a Roman emperor endorsed as the official teachings of Jesus)?" can now find and read about the early Jesus movement and the arguments and controversies over the teachings that were raging.
I imagine that even if I were raised as a Christian in a future life (assuming what I shouldn't assume – that reincarnation is linear in time), I would find my way to the Gnostic Gospels. I'm fairly confident it is in my karma to be inquisitive by nature and to be one of the people to ask, "There's more?!".
Me: "Well, what is it?"
Christian: "It's heresy, blasphemy"
"But Jesus taught it?"
"I don't know. I don't think so. Anyway it's wrong"
"Says who?"
"The church fathers"
"Oh. OK. Who were the church fathers?"
"I'm not sure. It has to do something with the Roman emperor Constantine who convened the Nicene Council. You can Google it"
"OK, I will"
"On the other hand, maybe you shouldn't"
Much of the Gnostic Gospels focuses on the hidden, esoteric spiritual interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, as opposed to the moralistic, institutional, authority-driven interpretation of the current canon. Today, as must have been the case in the early Jesus movement, they appeal to a completely different character and psychological/spiritual make-up than those who favored the straight-forward and direct, and even political, nature of what became the canon.
I was surprised recently to realize that I've never actually read the four canonical Gospels except in portions. I only realized it upon finding a book called The Five Gospels.
The Five Gospels was the result of a project in the late 80s/early 90s by a group called the Jesus Seminar, consisting of about 200 biblical scholars who rendered a modern, scholar-friendly translation of the four canonical Gospels from an original Greek manuscript, plus the gnostic Gospel of Thomas from a Coptic translation from Nag Hammadi.
They then set out to present a scholarly consensus over any quote attributed to Jesus and the likelihood that Jesus himself spoke those words. Consensual certainty that he said something is printed in bold red, certainty that he did not is printed in bold black; and pink and grey are used for weighted votes in between relative consensual certainty.
The reason they included the Gospel of Thomas is that it is simply comprised of alleged quotes by Jesus with no narrative context. Since the project was focused on what Jesus likely actually said, they deemed it appropriate to subject Thomas to the test.
I would say it's a flawed work, for sure, but still fascinating. The criteria for putting words into the mouth of Jesus are based on narrow presuppositions imposed by the seminar. The voting method over a period of years also results in inconsistencies, which the authors reveal in the commentary.
Actually, never having read the canonical gospels didn't mean much. Just growing up in the U.S., just about all of the stories were familiar. It doesn't matter if you're Christian or not, if you grow up in the U.S., you're bombarded with Christian references your whole life.
(Even in the subtlest ways. In high school, a group of friends were playing Trivial Pursuit. Two of the participants were brothers, Mark and John Smylie. The question was what are the four gospels of the New Testament. One of the brothers on the other team rattled off "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John", and we were all blown away how they knew that as easily as any of the rest of us could name The Beatles. He casually pointed to his brother, "John", pointed to himself "Mark, and our dad's a pastor, if we had two more brothers, they would have been Matthew and Luke". And that's how I learned the names of the four gospels culturally. The only Luke I knew prior was Skywalker, son of
One thing I found fascinating was that just about any familiar quotation, repeated ad infinitum in U.S. culture, was voted black. Jesus likely never said those quotes, but were attributed to him by members of the later movement trying to push their interpretation of what he taught.
This is a good place to note that I realize even though the Gnostic Gospels appeal to me, they also are iterations of positions in a fervent debate. I think they are right and the canon got it completely wrong, but there are billions of Christians who disagree (no doubt Christians who don't even want it discussed or out in the open and would prefer the suppression and censorship to continue).
Also, just reading the red quotations, this Jesus character strikes me as someone enlightened, imparting radical wisdom that was intended to shake the normative sensibilities and mores of the day. I agree with the assessment of scholars that Jesus wasn't into institution building.
That seems to indicate to me that if he were alive today, he would rail against the institution of the Christian church. He would rail against the conformity, control and conservatism of the church. A red quote widely attributed to Jesus can be directed to many Christians today: You point out the sliver in someone else's eye while ignoring the timber in your own.
He wasn't about placating people or making people feel good about being moral and righteous. He was about shaking things up. If you thought something and mindlessly accepted it as the norm, he would say something to disturb you.
Something the Jesus Seminar posits, which I have no comment on whatsoever but think is quite funny, is that he ate well and drank freely. I think they call him a glutton and a drunkard.
To Christians today, those are vices to be eschewed, but they make sense to someone trying to shake the norms of society. I think he did live under Jewish law because that was the water in which he was a fish, but I think he constantly pushed their boundaries to the extent that the law was being abused by temple authorities.
And even if he was glutton and a drunkard, his teachings understood correctly were good. They aimed toward liberation. I'd take a good teaching by a glutton and drunkard over a bad teaching by someone self-professed to be moral and righteous any day.
It seems to me natural now to be fascinated by Christianity, but it's not. I never was much interested in Christianity until the Gnostic Gospels. The vast majority of my exposure to Christianity was cultural – the devotional side of blind, uncritical faith which never resonated with me.
I did take a course at Oberlin which did critically cover the historical underpinnings of Christianity and I loved that course. Mostly because it didn't deal with the myth of Christianity, which is what most Christians today believe. Myth comprises the reality of most Christians because they for most part reject the scholarship, which aims at getting to the historical realities.
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
Before the Music Dies
I have a few more cable channels thanks to my landlord upgrading the telecom around here. Shouldn't complicate things too much. I now have an extra Korean entertainment channel, expanded Discovery, news and HBO channels and Sundance Channel.
A primary gain from the extra Korean entertainment channel is a program which highlights working South Korean bands of various genres. With my recent unhealthy and unholy penchant towards K-pop girl groups, this program makes it clear that the Korean music scene is, in fact, more variegated and diverse.
Rock, live music, musicianship and people who are likely not so impressed by the international popularity of K-pop are alive and well in Korea, granted none of the bands on the show, albeit listenable and not terrible, have grabbed me. It's still good to know it's there.
And irony not missed, one of the first films I watched on the Sundance Channel was a documentary called Before the Music Dies, generally about the commercialization of the music industry in the U.S. The important point to me is that everything disparaging that is said or described about how bad music is manufactured in the U.S. is precisely how it's done in Korea.
The difference, I might defensively flail, is that there's no question about the nature of K-pop in Korea. There is no argument about art vs. commerce. I'm a fan of K-pop girl groups and not once has it crossed my mind that this is art or has integrity in any way.
K-pop idols are people who want to be performers, but don't have the artistic inspiration or wherewithal to make it on their own from the ground up. They have talents and are highly trainable. The entertainment agencies aren't interested in art. They're not trying to make good music. They only want to make money.
To the process vs. product argument, by process, K-pop is by definition bad music. As for product, as I've mentioned over and over again, I don't know why I like K-pop and no other manufactured pop from other countries. I put it to better songwriting, but that's hardly quantifiable.
I might mention, if I haven't already, it is essential to my fandom that I can't understand the lyrics, which I'm sure are so banal as to be insulting. That's a given. I'm only a fan because I can't understand the lyrics.
Another given is that if I saw the music collections of the celebrity idols of whom I'm a fan, I would cringe and wilt and scream in anguish to the skies, "whhhhyyyyy?!!!". I'm sure they listen to shit that I despise and would likely not be impressed by my music collection, either.
Mind you that's very different from musicians I genuinely respect. I would want to know their sources and I'd likely listen to and respect, if not personally like, what they listen to. Fuck, I don't even like Eric Clapton, totally overrated, but he's real enough that I'd totally be interested in who his influences were.
This is future life projecting. If the Hinduistic/Buddhistic model of reincarnation is somewhat valid, and if it is Korea to where I'm angling a rebirth, then maybe it's not a place that will be jolting or shocking towards my samsaric karma.
That is to say that if I am reborn in Korea, it would be the result of attachments and not-quite-enlightened views of being that would manifest, but I'd still be OK to find myself on my path. Penchant towards K-pop girl groups notwithstanding.
A primary gain from the extra Korean entertainment channel is a program which highlights working South Korean bands of various genres. With my recent unhealthy and unholy penchant towards K-pop girl groups, this program makes it clear that the Korean music scene is, in fact, more variegated and diverse.
Rock, live music, musicianship and people who are likely not so impressed by the international popularity of K-pop are alive and well in Korea, granted none of the bands on the show, albeit listenable and not terrible, have grabbed me. It's still good to know it's there.
And irony not missed, one of the first films I watched on the Sundance Channel was a documentary called Before the Music Dies, generally about the commercialization of the music industry in the U.S. The important point to me is that everything disparaging that is said or described about how bad music is manufactured in the U.S. is precisely how it's done in Korea.
The difference, I might defensively flail, is that there's no question about the nature of K-pop in Korea. There is no argument about art vs. commerce. I'm a fan of K-pop girl groups and not once has it crossed my mind that this is art or has integrity in any way.
K-pop idols are people who want to be performers, but don't have the artistic inspiration or wherewithal to make it on their own from the ground up. They have talents and are highly trainable. The entertainment agencies aren't interested in art. They're not trying to make good music. They only want to make money.
To the process vs. product argument, by process, K-pop is by definition bad music. As for product, as I've mentioned over and over again, I don't know why I like K-pop and no other manufactured pop from other countries. I put it to better songwriting, but that's hardly quantifiable.
I might mention, if I haven't already, it is essential to my fandom that I can't understand the lyrics, which I'm sure are so banal as to be insulting. That's a given. I'm only a fan because I can't understand the lyrics.
Another given is that if I saw the music collections of the celebrity idols of whom I'm a fan, I would cringe and wilt and scream in anguish to the skies, "whhhhyyyyy?!!!". I'm sure they listen to shit that I despise and would likely not be impressed by my music collection, either.
Mind you that's very different from musicians I genuinely respect. I would want to know their sources and I'd likely listen to and respect, if not personally like, what they listen to. Fuck, I don't even like Eric Clapton, totally overrated, but he's real enough that I'd totally be interested in who his influences were.
This is future life projecting. If the Hinduistic/Buddhistic model of reincarnation is somewhat valid, and if it is Korea to where I'm angling a rebirth, then maybe it's not a place that will be jolting or shocking towards my samsaric karma.
That is to say that if I am reborn in Korea, it would be the result of attachments and not-quite-enlightened views of being that would manifest, but I'd still be OK to find myself on my path. Penchant towards K-pop girl groups notwithstanding.
Sunday, December 01, 2013
complicated
When I visited Audrey last Monday in Kaohsiung, she picked me up at the HSR station in a white Lexus that I'd never seen before. Not really a wonder as I hadn't visited in over three years. I got in and also wasn't too surprised at the feeling that technology has left me far behind.
I mean, I could probably drive the car easy enough, but incorporating any technological details would require some degree of learning curve. The dash and the controls would take familiarizing. The rear-view screen when the car is in reverse would no doubt have me bumping into cars first time around. Although I can see the convenience in that technology, I have also always been able to park perfectly well without it.
The Bluetooth phone connection had me shaking my head at how complicated my cousin's life is. And despite her desire to simplify once she moves to the U.S., the fabric of her current life is already complicated and it won't be so easy to break away from habit. I know from experience.
It was my ideal when I moved to Taiwan to live a simple, hermit-like existence, but years later I looked at the clutter of my apartment and wondered "where did all of this stuff come from?!". It was the day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month habit of wanting this or that or thinking I needed this or that.
Even with mindfulness practice in place and being watchful of being a consumer animal, one thing always leads to another. Years later I find myself with an apartment full of stuff.
The past few years have been helpful. I think my reaction to the complexity of my cousin's life is a result of my years of not wanting anything or wanting to do anything, even eat. Since the torpor ended, I've been engaged in a slow process of house cleaning and getting rid of the clutter.
But the temptations still arise.
Recently my landlord (Audrey's uncle) upgraded the internet/cable in this property. Simply said, what I had thought were my simple habits regarding watching TV have gotten more nuanced, ergo complicated.
There's good and bad. Complicated is bad just in itself. But the good is the scattering of those simple habits I had come to expect and around which I had come to live my life. I have to let go of those habits and adapt to being technologically upgraded without going overboard. I'll see how well I do with that once he installs a promised (not asked for) flat screen LED TV.
I mean, I could probably drive the car easy enough, but incorporating any technological details would require some degree of learning curve. The dash and the controls would take familiarizing. The rear-view screen when the car is in reverse would no doubt have me bumping into cars first time around. Although I can see the convenience in that technology, I have also always been able to park perfectly well without it.
The Bluetooth phone connection had me shaking my head at how complicated my cousin's life is. And despite her desire to simplify once she moves to the U.S., the fabric of her current life is already complicated and it won't be so easy to break away from habit. I know from experience.
It was my ideal when I moved to Taiwan to live a simple, hermit-like existence, but years later I looked at the clutter of my apartment and wondered "where did all of this stuff come from?!". It was the day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month habit of wanting this or that or thinking I needed this or that.
Even with mindfulness practice in place and being watchful of being a consumer animal, one thing always leads to another. Years later I find myself with an apartment full of stuff.
The past few years have been helpful. I think my reaction to the complexity of my cousin's life is a result of my years of not wanting anything or wanting to do anything, even eat. Since the torpor ended, I've been engaged in a slow process of house cleaning and getting rid of the clutter.
But the temptations still arise.
Recently my landlord (Audrey's uncle) upgraded the internet/cable in this property. Simply said, what I had thought were my simple habits regarding watching TV have gotten more nuanced, ergo complicated.
There's good and bad. Complicated is bad just in itself. But the good is the scattering of those simple habits I had come to expect and around which I had come to live my life. I have to let go of those habits and adapt to being technologically upgraded without going overboard. I'll see how well I do with that once he installs a promised (not asked for) flat screen LED TV.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
