The King James or Authorized Version of the Bible

A BBC report on the re-re-discovery of an original printing of the KJV - my favourite translation of the Bible - not for its textual accuracy - scholarly understanding of Hebrew and Greek is more advanced now than in the 17th century, so modern translations are more technically accurate - but because I tend to see the world through the eyes of a poet, and the Authorized version, or as it is usually labelled, the King James version, is pure prose-poetry and elicits all the responses good poetry should in the human heart.

Here is the link [also linked if you click on the title of this post]

Wiltshire copy of KJV Bible

The Academic Study of Religion and Objectivity

On a listserv I follow, a poster cited the historian Garry Wills as an authority on Catholic history. Here is the response I posted:



Gary Wills?  No.  Email needs a gentle sarcasm emoticon.  Gary Wills is an example of a phenomenon labelled by anthropologists as 'going native'.  Let me explain.  Anthropologists do basic research using a technique called participant observation. They live over extended periods of time with the group they are studying, the object being acceptance to a degree that they see and experience things an outsider would miss. At the same time they must keep enough mental distance to retain a social scientific objectivity. Anthropologists all know stories of colleagues who went over this indistinct, shifting line and became members of the group they had set out to study, losing objectivity and becoming defenders, supporters, advocates rather than researchers.

Gary Wills was an excellent historian whose work can be read with profit.  Alas however, he did the equivalent to 'going native' for an academic historian. He became an advocate,
supporter, defender for a particular point of view rather than a researcher.



When I began my training as an historian of religion, my first mentor taught that one should study primarily outside your own faith group in order to avoid the temptation to 'go native'. This like most sage advice is most often ignored, but is still wise. Garry Wills's books on American history are highly thought of by fellow academics, but his books on Catholicism are not. He went native and lost the ability to be a good historian.

Judaism in the Roman Empire

Finally found some decent work on the place of Judaism in the Roman Empire - not as part of the usual tale of Christians and Jews - but from the point of view of Judaism itself and the degree of social integration with both pagans and Christians - 'The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire' "Lieu, North and Rajak, Routledge, 1992  - the chapters are derived from seminars held at the Institute of Classical Studies in London.  I am mining some interesting nuggets on ordinary believers, which is my principle research interest.

Reginald Bibby and the Sociology of Religion in Canada

I might make this article the focus of one of the last two discussions this term for students of my World Religions in Historical Context class - but offer it here for anyone to reflect on...

Just click here or on the blog title...

Heritage & History

This post is not about religion, but about what it is to study the past in general. Take an hour from your day and listen to this talk by Sir Keith Thomas. Prof. Thomas wrote a seminal study of religion and magic 40 years ago Religion and the Decline of Magic

Listen here:

http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2011/04/keith-thomas-heritage-or-history-conflicting-views-of-the-past/

Religion and Homosexuality

There!  I'll bet that title grabbed some attention!

These are just a few hurried, rambling thoughts sparked by a comment I heard an evangelical Protestant Christian make wherein he opined that the public acceptance of homosexuality meant a civilisation was only a generation away from collapse....

I doubt this is so, though I must admit I have not made a study of this.  Usually when statements like this are made, references to ancient Rome follow quickly [as they did in this case].  It is amazing actually that the fall of the Roman empire [in the West.......] still looms so large in our perceptions here in the 21st century.  

But, back on track, in classical Greece, homosexuality was an integral part of its culture -  not a sign of its end, or approaching end.  My reading on this is way out of date, but the last time I looked at the literature by specialists, heterosexuality was a viewed as a regrettable necessity to ensure children and the running of a household.  Love was properly confined to older male with younger male.  

Rome, on the other hand,  in its traditional morality was a warrior culture, a legalistic culture, an engineer's paradise - and homosexuality was not part of this schema.  The conquest of Greece by Rome brought not only philosophy, poetry, history, art... but also homosexuality.But for Romans this was delectable forbidden fruit - and may indeed have been a part of a long, slow decline.  It did not take a generation, however, but many generations - Greek culture entered Rome several hundred years before the collapse in the West.  

When Rome began to integrate Christian morality into public morality, I would guess [but simply do not know] that there were sparks flying.  I do know that part of the internal debate in Christianity in the ancient world, was whether to integrate Greek philosophy into Christian theology.  But, I suspect that the rejection of the homosexual component of Greek civilisation was easier for the Latin West to accept as it accorded more closely with traditional Roman morality.  I wish I knew how the cultural Greek Christian East handled this, but I do not.

Today, we have a rapid acceptance of public homosexuality -but this acceptance is a very different thing than the situation in ancient Rome. We have, not a kind of decadent, prurient pleasure in forbidden fruit, but the gradual construction of a moral system which integrates homosexuality as evidence of a positive 'good'.  There is an obvious irony here, or maybe not so obvious.......   This new moral code rests on individualism as the ultimate good in society.  The irony comes from this elevation of individualism to being next to godliness - for western individualism comes out of Christianity and its concern for the individual soul as a primary focus of a relationship with God, of preaching, of practice [taking communion, confession, evangelical conversion experiences, doing good, doing evil, strictures on speech, action] ... in short a profound individualism is integral to Christianity.  Being social animals westerners formed 'church' - but 'church' almost immediately split into factions, which grew out of individual thinkers disputing other thinkers.  Christians concerned about the fractiousness of their faith go on a lot about 1054, or 1517, forgetting those who rejected 325. or forgetting the churches that Paul spent a lot of time chastising......

I doubt [and here I am farther out on a limb] that Islam will ever accept homosexuality as Islam is not at heart an individualistic faith, but more essentially communitarian with its concern for the ummah, for example.  I wish I knew more about Hinduism in this regard, which is very different....Buddhism is popular in the West as it is highly individualistic......well, another thought strikes me as I go over different faiths in my mind - only Christianity, Judaism and Islam seem to care all that much about homosexuality.  

Atheists and Christians

I was thinking [meditating?] the other day on atheists - not atheism as that seems intellectually hollow at its core, but on atheists, the preaching, evangelical kind, that is.  Not your everyday atheist, the person who prefers not to think about ultimate things, or consider all that much the question 'why' ..... but those who make a lot of noise in this world, preaching in newspapers, magazines and in great public fora where ever they can get a congregation together.

What strikes me is their essence seems to be a kind of anti-Christianity.  Oh, they often use the word 'religion', but they mean Christianity.  I think they are a kind of reverse to the obverse of the same coin - that evangelical atheism is a counterpoint to Christianity, and were it not for this religion of the West,  the alternate religion of the West, materialism, would not exist.  I wonder if it is an outgrowth of that process I call dis-integration.

By this I mean that religion, once integrated into society to such a degree that asking 'what is your religion?' would make as much sense as asking someone today, 'what is your physics?' - that religion is now dis-integrated, as is everything else by the habit of thought we call science, and placed in its separate category.  Once 'religion' [aka Christianity] is one category of analysis amongst many others, it is subject to vivisection, analysis, sub-categorization, erudite studies of function, etc. etc. - that is, it is no longer 'real' in the way 'atoms' are not real.....

Just sayin'