To Ialdabaoth with thee, O National Geographic!

Here's a fascinating article about the Gospel of Judas mess a couple years back (and if you didn't know it was a mess, you really ought to read the article). It's stuff like this that shows the kind of real damage that can come from the pairing of careless scholarship and profit-eyed sponsors, especially when they meet over an area, like the early history of Christianity, where the public is both emotionally interested and severely misinformed.

The hat tip, as they say, goes to Jim West.

Update: You can read a response to this article from National Geographic here. (thanks again to Jim West)

Lord Macaulay and Political Rhetoric

I recently came across this excellent passage, written by Macaulay in 1839 in a review of William Gladstone's book The State in its Relations with the Church, in a collection of his essays. It seems to me a fine characterization of political rhetoric, although the circumstances of politics have changed greatly since Macaulay's day, even if the bare structures of legislature have not. In an era when statesmen speak to broadcast cameras before their colleagues and the debates of any body aim rather to flatter the commonest voter than convince their abler representative, even the showman's eloquence that Macaulay here describes is lost to us. For this reason the faults he cites have been greatly and unfortunately magnified, so that the orators who seemed to wed vacuity to eloquence in his day have found a style as ugly and as stumbling as their arguments in ours. But these are my thoughts; here are Macaulay's:

"There is little danger that people engaged in the conflicts of active life will be too much addicted to general speculation. The opposite vice is that which most easily besets them. The times and tides of business and debate tarry for no man. A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read. He may be very ill informed respecting a question; all his notions about it may be vague and inaccurate; but speak he must; and if he is a man of ability, of tact, and of intrepidity, he soon finds that, even under such circumstances, it is possible to speak successfully. He finds that there is a great difference between the effect of written words, which are perused and reperused in the stillness of the closet, and the effect of spoken words which, set off by the graces of utterance and gestures vibrate for a single moment on the ear. He finds that he may blunder without much chance of being detected, that he may reason sophistically, and escape unrefuted. He finds that, even on knotty questions of trade and legislation, he can, without reading ten pages, or thinking ten minutes, draw forth loud plaudits, and sit down with the credit of having made an excellent speech.
Lysias, says Plutarch, wrote a defence for a man who was to be tried before one of the Athenian tribunals. Long before the defendant had learned the speech by heart, he became so much dissatisfied with it that he went in great distress to the author. "I was delighted with your speech the first time I read it; but I liked it less the second time, and still less the third time; and now it seems to me to be no defence at all." "My good friend," says Lysias, "you quite forget that the judges are to hear it only once." The case is the same in the English Parliament. It would be as idle in an orator to waste deep meditation and long research on his speeches, as it would be in the manager of a theatre to adorn all the crowd of courtiers and ladies who cross over the stage in a procession with real pearls and diamonds. It is not by accuracy or profundity that men become the masters of great assemblies. And why b e at the charge of providing logic of the best quality, when a very inferior article will be equally acceptable? Why go as deep into a question as Burke, only in order to be, like Burke, coughed down, or left speaking to green benches and red boxes? This has long appeared to us to be the most serious of the evils which are to be set off against the many blessings of popular government.
It is a fine and true saying of Bacon, that reading makes a full man, talking a ready man, and writing an exact man. The tendency of institutions like those of England is to encourage readiness in public men, at the expense both of fulness and of exactness. The keenest and most vigorous minds of every generation, minds often admirably fitted for the investigation of truth, are habitually employed in producing arguments such as no man of sense would ever put into a treatise intended for publication, arguments which are just good enough to be used once, when aided by fluent delivery and pointed language. The habit of discussing questions in this way necessarily reacts on the intellects of our ablest men, particularly of those who are introduced into parliament at a very early age, before their minds have expanded to full maturity. The talent for debate is developed in such men to a degree which, to the multitude, seems as marvellous as the performance of an Italian Improvisatore. But they are fortunate indeed if they retain unimpaired the faculties which are required for close reasoning or for enlarged speculation. Indeed we should sooner expect a great original work on political science, such a work, for example, as the Wealth of Nations, from an apothecary in a country town, or from a minister in the Hebrides, than from a statesmen who, ever since he was one-and-twenty, had been a distinguished debater in the House of Commons."

Quotes to be Attributed to Me in My Fame

"It was Jonson's view that Donne's meter merited hanging, and I am generally much in favor of following his advice with modern poets. Unfortunately, the state of affairs is such that we would soon run out of rope in applying that principle today."

"I find it hard to respect a poet who has no command of the classical languages. He had better be Shakespeare or he had better stop trying."

Interlocutor: "But surely you would agree that Poe's jingling is as bad as Whitman's formlessness?"
Rivera: "I certainly would not! Poe's verse is merely bad; Whitman does violence with his poems."

Eagerly Awaiting the Barkley Administration

Any fan of the NBA knows, either from more or less established sources, that Charles Barkley intends to enter the political arena, possibly this year, when the mayorship of his hometown of Leeds, Alabama, is up for election. I heartily approve of such an endeavor ending ultimately at the White House, and not only because of the Hellenic precedent, but also because Mr. Barkley's charm and competitive nature would undoubtedly prove excellent diplomatic instruments.

A high profile campaign from The Round Mound would also probably mean this gem hits the airwaves more often, which, for my taxpaying money, is hardly a bad thing.

Narrative in the Mainstream

Some academic preoccupations never make it to the mainstream of society; in fact, they never used to until fairly recently. I'd like to blame the nineteenth century for it, but the truth is that the Reformers were probably the first to attempt something like a popularization of intellectual culture. In any case, an academic term that seems slowly to be seeping into popular journalism is "narrative." I first noticed this several months back in an opinion piece (I forget the author now), which detailed the struggle between Clinton and Obama to stamp their lives with positive "narratives," the most popular of which is of course the story of the kid that dreamed big and beat the odds to have a chance, even though there were so many obstacles, to be president. The article (if I remember correctly) contended that the 2004 campaign was decided when the Bush campaign was able to redefine the "narrative" of Kerry's life from war hero to political opportunist.

The term seems now to have made its way even into the sports page, if this article by Yahoo Sports' Adrian [why didn't this get changed at Ellis Island?] is any indication. We encounter the term near the end of the article:

"LeBron James has done a masterful job of setting the stage for the Celtics series, conspiring with his coach, Mike Brown, to make the world believe he had been pummeled in the Washington Wizards series. The Wizards rate as one of the softest defensive teams in the Eastern Conference, but between James’ bellyaching and Brown pounding podiums, the Cavs had referees and league officials treating the Wiz like the Bad Boy Pistons.

For them, it’ll be fascinating to see if they can carry that narrative into the Eastern Conference semifinals. This was effective against the Wiz and privately the Celtics wonder if the precious treatment of the Cavaliers’ superstar gets transferred to them now."

Post-modernity seems now to have convinced sportswriters that rhetoric is actually winning basketball games. Of course, time will only tell if Lebron James' discourse of the hard foul is a sufficient technology of power to control the Celtics, or if he'll need to make some shots as well.

The Wisdom of the Ancients, and the wit / Of Modern Man

"'Gnothi seauton [know thyself],' despite Socrates' creative use of the phrase, simply means 'I'm a god, you're not.'"
-James Redfield, alluding to the famous inscription on Apollo's temple at Delphi in response to a question on the sentiment of Iliad V.440-442,which, for those of you with "less Greek," Pope has thus:

"O son of Tydeus, cease! be wise and see
How vast the difference of the Gods and thee!
Distance immense! between the pow'rs that shine
Above, eternal, deathless, and divine,
And mortal man! a wretch of humble birth,
A short-lived reptile in the dust of earth."

When asked whether any ancient Greek was known to have climbed the actual Mount Olympus in order to find out if there were really any gods up there, my professor answered thusly:
"The Greeks didn't climb mountains; they were much more sensible than that."

...et multi pseudoprophetae sugent

It is unfortunately more often sobering than inspiring to peer as a learned Christian into the world of common spirituality; and yet we must guard our reactions from despair with the knowledge that the lowly ones of every age have always been more susceptible to the seductions of folly, just as the enticements of knowledge have been more often injurious to the high. From the very beginnings of the church, as the letters of Paul attest, Christian communities have felt the pull of strange gospels, laced by their charismatic preachers with both worldliness and exoticism, and we would be vain to think that in our western world, where the heirs of the apostolic witness, if we may not call them any longer witnesses themselves to that gospel, have grown slothful, and where the one use of the Christianized state, which is the tighter control of all preaching contrary to the gospel, has given way to the triumphant banners of secularism; in this world of ours, we would be vain to think ourselves unsullied, and the uninhibited spread and undeserving influence of false Christianities of various kinds should not alarm us with the shock of surprise, but rather the terrible recognition of disaster. For my part, I do not think I am enough exposed to these things; my eyes are too often turned down upon the page to look about me. Yet even the humble scholar does not remain forever aloof, although he feel the pains of the age more as pinches than an oppressive burden's weight. I felt such a pinch over my spring break, when, as I talked with a younger cousin of mine, she said offhand, though she could not recall the details, that her youth pastor had told them that the world was going to end in a few years, and given them details of the ending; I am remorseful still that I did not write a little note for her to give him, saying only "Matthew 24:36." Of such a teacher is it truly spoken, --or if he is a helpless fool, the teachers teacher-- "It cannot be avoided that there will be cause for stumbling. But woe to him through whom such causes come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung about his neck, and he were cast into the sea, than that he should cause one of these little ones to stumble." (Luke 27:1-3).

Similarly today, following a link from the inestimable Jim West, I was led to this blog post, and the lengthy, but I think worthwhile, article it discusses. I think it will be obvious to those of you who take the time to read it why the ruminations of a secular journalist should have inspired such fierce declamation from this page --until I have some pulpit I shall be restrained to such inspired impotences as these. But I found it more unsettling as I read that the self-assured detachment of cynicism which the author expressed was far more near to me than utterances of his subjects, who all felt they were Christians. Let us credit him some for his rhetoric, however much I might loathe the aesthetic that governs such pieces, and remember that he writes for Rolling Stone; but let it also warn all of us who are of a class with the author and Christians as well, that if it is true that both we ourselves and the people he described are indeed new creatures in Christ, we ought neither to find them so alien to us, nor feel the comfort of kinship more easily in a thing bound by death.