tim@cmu-cs-k.ARPA (Tim Maroney) (06/04/85)
What struck me most about Boskovich's pamphlet was the general shoddiness of the essay. It is practically a plagiarism of C. S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, and a few Intervarsity Christian Fellowship pamphlets. Long sections are conceptually identical with their sources, adding nothing, paraphrasing instead of writing. In a term paper, this would get you a "D"; in publishing, it can get you sued, though plagiarism is hard to prove in almost all cases. Further, Boskovich repeatedly demonstrates his ignorance of history and of comparative religion, usually by parroting a mistake from one of his sources. He seems to have researched the essay completely from pro-Christian tracts, and not done any outside research of his own. For instance, he deals with Herodotus and Caesar's Gallic Wars as if modern-day historians treated them as infallible. This is a common implication in McDowell and IVCF publications, but in fact, both of these "histories" are viewed with great skepticism by modern scholars. They are considered suggestive, nothing more, and are known to be riddled with inaccuracies. Boskovich says, "to reject the New Testament records without rejecting all other historical documents and regarding them unreliable, would be to act in utter bias and absurdity." I agree. Modern historians DO consider all ancient historical documents unreliable. The Gospels are no exception; to consider them alone infallible is to act in utter bias and absurdity. This implied falsehood about other documents is in the midst of a proof of how faithful to the originals the New Testament is. But of course this is all beside the point; a lie can be reproduced as faithfully as a truth, and the number of copies of something has nothing to do with its veracity. To overlook this obvious fact is proof that the person is trying to support a conclusion he has already accepted, or that he is extremely stupid. I prefer to believe the former of anyone who can type. There is more amusing ignorance all through the pamphlet. I believe Padraig already pointed out that the Hindu Mahabharata disproves Boskovich's claims that, of all scriptures, only the Bible reveals the flaws as well as the virtues of the main characters. He did not mention the Vedas, which put the lie to the following claims of Biblical uniqueness while demonstrating Boskovich's high-school proclivity for sentence fragments: "Written over a 1500 year span; 40 generations. Written by over 40 authors from every walk of life (Kings, peasants, poets, fisherman, herdsman, doctor, tax collector etc.) Written in different places: In the wilderness, in dungeons, in a palace, in prisons etc. Written during different moods: Written in war time, peace time, heights of joy, depths of sorrow." All these are true of the Vedas as well, which pre-date the Bible considerably. In fact, if we are to introduce uniqueness as a criterion, we have just thrown out the whole Biblical approach to morality, which in its list of taboos can be traced back to a human invention, the Code of Hammurabi. From a non-human source we would expect to find some approach genuinely different from that invented by humans, not simply a warmed-over version of the Pharonic decrees at the time of the Exodus. Boskovich claims that the Bible is free of any inaccuracy. Snarf snarf snarf. Of course you say that, you're a fundamentalist Christian. A fundamentalist Moslem would as fervently defend the absolute validity of the Quran, and any Orthodox Jew will be only too happy to point out to you the many prophecies about the Messiah which Jesus did NOT fulfill. Even Christians cannot agree among themselves as to what the Bible is saying on many issues, such as the role of works in salvation. Actually, I have been too kind in the paragraph above. What he really said was "The Bible, is the only religious book in which there has never been found a legitimate error." Let us all go sit on Boskovich's doorstep until he tells us what "legitimate errors" he finds in the Tao Teh Ching and the Dhammapadda. (What's that? He never read them? Well, surprise, surprise, surprise!) In his frantic graspings for some valid and significant uniqueness criterion, Boskovich displays time and again the poverty of his knowledge of religions, even of non-Protestant Christianity. "The bible is unique in its teaching about salvation. All religions of the world have one thing in common. They all portray salvation as attainable through human effort. The natural desire of man to earn merit is completely absent in the writers of scripture as they, one by one, from Genesis to Revelation, illustrate the inadequecy of man and the Gracious gift of God: Salvation!" Apparently Boskovich is completely unaware that most mystical religious traditions do not view salvation as a thing attainable through effort -- it is only when the desire for salvation is snuffed out, and effort ceases, that salvation may come. He has never heard of shamanistic religions, it seems, since these frequently have no real concept of salvation. He is also unaware that in Catholic theology deliberate works are an absolutely vital part of salvation. When Boskovich generalizes about religions, you may take it as given that he is wrong, since he is clearly arguing from a position of ignorance. One of the funniest parts of Boskovich's pamphlet is a part which I believe he cribbed directly from an IVCF pamphlet: "The very restrained portrait of Christ testifies to their inspiration. One only has to read the mythologies of various cultures to see the propensity of man to embellish the truth with fantastic imagination. Even the non-biblical writings of Jesus, portray him as a childhood prodigy instructing His schoolteachers with hidden mysteries in the alphabet and astounding His family and playmates with miraculous works. One story has Jesus, age 5, fashioning 12 sparrows out of clay on the Sabbath. When questioned by His father about such activity, Jesus clapped His hands and the sparrows flew away chirping! In total contrast, the Bible portrays the miracles of Christ with straight forward simplicity. The biblical writers purpose is not to entertain or to sensationalize, but to demonstrate the power, authority, and glory of Christ." Ah. Raising the dead and walking around after death with holes in your body is simple and restrained. Making clay sparrows (totally in line with the attributes of YHVH as described in Genesis, by the way), on the other hand, is sensationalized fantasy. Thanks for making that so very clear. Seriously, this is another example of Boskovich's willingness to invert logic and claim his "conclusions" as facts: the Biblical account is true, the apocryphal accounts false, so the latter are ludicrous while the former are reasonable. A silly, exaggerated miracle story would be that a giant platypus stopped a flood of chocolate from destroying this year's marshmallows; but there is no way we can say that making living birds is sillier than restoring dead humans to life, without being arbitrary. Nor can we say that a story in which Jesus instructs his childhood playmates in the alphabet is any sillier than a story in which he befuddles some aged rabbis with his knowledge of the Torah at age 12. Another quote from the section on uniqueness demonstrating Boskovich's abysmal ignorance of other religions follows: "The bible has survived various attacks and attempts to destroy it." Somewhat true, but the world record in that area has to be held by the Talmud, which Christians tried to eradicate for centuries. So should we all be Jews now, instead of Christians, Mr. Boskovich, or should we just ignore your uniqueness criteria? Now we segue into Boskovich's attempts to use Josh McDowell's research results. First, as has been pointed out many times, McDowell seems never to seriously consider the possibility of later Christian interpolations into texts. Most of McDowell's "Evidence That Demands a Verdict" consists of passages which are almost unanimously considered interpolations by modern scholars. At least that is what I have been told; I believe it because from reading McDowell's book on the occult, one of my specialty fields of knowledge, it was obvious that he is an extremely shallow and uncritical researcher. (I mean, not knowing about the Golden Dawn, for Had's sake! Practically all twentieth century occultism comes straight from it!) So I need have no hesitation in dismissing the entire discussion on "external writings" as fabrication. Is that unfair? No, it's McDowell's karma; if he had been scrupulous in his research, I would not have this attitude, and if Boskovich had not shown himself so willing to plagiarize, I would not dismiss him as a bargain-basement McDowell. Of course, about half of Boskovich's quotes are silly and pointless anyway. Who cares, for instance, that Tertullian's works contains quotes from the Gospels? That proves nothing at all even if it is authentic. The same goes for Pliny mentioning the existence of Christians to Trajan. So there were Christians then; there are Christians now, too, and that doesn't prove anything about the veracity of Christian mythology. So Suetonius reported that Rome expelled Semitic Christians in 120 A.D.; once again, big hairy deal. So "Mara bar-Serapion" found the mythology of the Christians useful for literary effect around 75 A.D.; none of these, or the many other irrelevant quotes I have omitted for space reasons, has any bearing on proving the veracity of the Bible. As far as the existence question is concerned, my feeling on the subject is that there probably was a self-styled prophet Jesus of Nazareth, but you have to look at the history of the early Christians before evaluating the books which concern him. There were tons of warring Christian sects, many of whose works were declared apocryphal by the sect that attained dominance. There is no reason to think that the sect which won the war was necessarily the sect whose books accurately recorded the life and sayings of Jesus, if in fact any sect did so. In fact, there is stylistic evidence that Mark was not written by any single person, implying that some of it is simply interpolation; and of course we all know that Matthew and Luke are just rehashed versions of Mark written years later by people who never met Jesus. I was all over the issue of the resurrection with Bickford some time ago. He just stoppered his ears and launched broadsides at me, and I never got any feedback that indicated he or any other fundamentalist Christian had read a single word I wrote. Let's hope I can do better this time. "Where did the body go?" How do you know it went anywhere? The resurrection story may well be an interpolation; if you read Mark it certainly reads that way (unless you read one of the translations, like the KJ, that superimposes its own style on everything and obscures the underlying styles). Or let's say that the story is at least right about the corpse's disappearance. Boskovich admits that someone could have stolen it, but says no one could have done so because he can't think of any reason they would. The disciples, the people who had the most to gain from stealing this and fabricating a resurrection story, are excluded because "they were scared". I thought the early Christians were supposed to be fairly good at ignoring their fears and defying the Romans even at the cost of their lives? In any case, a blatantly immoral act by the authorities, such as killing an innocent or openly rigging an election, usually serves to radicalize people, once the shock wears off. But it doesn't have to be the disciples. Remember the superstitious state of medicine in those days. If Jesus was considered a healer, it would have been perfectly natural for some doctor to retrieve and experiment with the body, thinking it might have some inherent curative powers. (Thanks to M. Moorcock for that suggestion.) There are any number of other possible reasons to steal a body; dismissing the Jewish and Roman authorities as the perpetrators is hardly an exhaustive treatment of the possibilities. "What about the 500 people Jesus appeared to?" What 500 people? One, count him, one person who was already converted, and who wanted to convert others, wrote down this story, that Jesus had appeared before 500 people. This is NOT the same thing as eyewitness evidence, because the person could have fabricated the whole thing. Why didn't the Romans or Jews produce the body to disprove the resurrection? Look, if you can't figure that one out yourself in under a minute you might as well not bother with trying to think. I'll spell it out: Fables take time to spread, especially without mass media. Decomposition does not. One five-year-decomposed male corpse looks about the same as any other. Producing the corpse would prove nothing; for all we know, they tried it. There is also, again, the possibility that it was stolen. Finally, the Romans did not attempt to persecute the Christians by dogmatic debate, but by rounding them up and getting rid of them, so it may never have occurred to the Romans to attack the dogmas instead of the people. Citing the transformation in the Apostles' lives is a real high point of foolishness in the pamphlet. Do you think the same couldn't be said for any religion whatsoever, and most revolutionary political movements? Do you really think that Saul's conversion proves the veracity of the New Testament in some way? Any religion, and, again, most political movements, can point out equally unlikely conversions. Why would Gautama have cast off his status as prince to become an ascetic, unless he really was the Buddha? "What about prophecies of Christ's death?" Four explanations suggest themselves: first, an authentic ability to predict the future; second, later interpolations of the prophecies, after their "fulfillment"; third, that the crucifixion story is a fabrication made up to parallel Psalm 22 (actually, Boskovich, the only real parallel is in casting lots for the clothes -- the similarity between the Psalm and Jesus' words is not any sort of fulfillment of prophecy, since Jesus simply chose to say words he was already familiar with, possibly even because of the parallel with the lots); fourth, self-fulfilling prophecy, that Jesus deliberately undertook a suicidal course for whatever reason. Boskovich begins his wrap up with a blatant plagiarism of C. S. Lewis' "savior, liar, or madman" argument, for which, characteristically, he gives no credit. Also characteristically, he overlooks other possibilities. The real trick here is "madman": the word conjures up images of a straitjacketed cretin, foaming at the mouth, which is clearly not consistent with the Jesus of the Gospels. But anyone with a psychology education knows that there are delusions and delusions, and that a "madman" may appear extremely intelligent and even wise. Laing had not yet appeared in Lewis' day, but Boskovich has no such excuse. There is no inconsistency in the view that the Gospels are mostly correct in recording Jesus' teaching and Jesus was deluded into believing himself a messiah. There is also no inconsistency in the view that many of the more self-exalting statements of Jesus were interpolations by personality cultists after his death. These are two possibilities which Lewis and Boskovich conveniently overlook; there are others, but the point is made. Boskovich closes with the most self-serving and absurd argument of the pamphlet: "There can be no greater proof of Christianity than the proof of the thirst of our souls for that something that seems to be missing." The name of any other religion could be substituted for "Christianity" there, and the truth value of the sentence would be precisely the same. So how could such a statement even arise in Boskovich's mind? It is clear that he sees only two real choices, fundamentalist Christianity or atheism. Now we see why he has not bothered to study other religions; he has never considered that they might be valid. It is Christianity alone or nothing for him. Do not cling to the tiny God you have imagined; He is a She and an It and Nothing At All, and from THAT came Krishna and Dionysus and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Jesus and Mohammed and Therion and Mosheh and Zoroaster and all other prophets. Your religious understanding can only suffer from locking yourself in a tiny closet and desperately pretending the world does not exist, all the while coming up with hundreds of arguments why you should stay in the closet. Jesus will still love you in the full rays of the Sun. To quote the Prophet of the Silver Star, "The more necessary anything appears to my mind, the more certain it is that I only assert a limitation. I slept with Faith, and found a corpse in my arms on awaking; I drank and danced all night with Doubt, and found her a virgin in the morning." And: "All words are sacred and all prophets true". And: "Only loobies find excellence in these words." -=- Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University, Networking ARPA: Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K uucp: seismo!cmu-cs-k!tim CompuServe: 74176,1360 audio: shout "Hey, Tim!"
mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (06/04/85)
In large part, I have to agree with Tim's criticism of the Boskovich manifesto. [And now a brief pause while the world ends.] The gospels are not written as history, and playing "four out of five ancient manuscripts" is a foolish road to "truth". Lumping Josh McDowell with C. S. Lewis surely distorts the latter's writings, since Lewis was an Anglican and (from the testimony of his writings) held the view that scripture was not to be uniformly taken literally. On the other hand, [you knew there was a qualification coming, didn't you] Tim implies incorrectly that the authority for the ressurection comes out of the Gospels alone, in the following passage: > "What about the 500 people Jesus appeared to?" What 500 people? One, > count him, one person who was already converted, and who wanted to convert > others, wrote down this story, that Jesus had appeared before 500 people. The principal testimony is that passed down through the church; in particular, the Catholic, Eastern, Lutheran and Anglican churches express this sacramentally in the apostolic succession. There is a unbroken chain of laying on of hands from (say) the Episcopal bishop of Washington all the way back to the apostles. The gospels also provide a witness, but they are written for believers, to explain and define. Interestingly enough, many Christians do not "disbelieve" in the Buddha-- myself included. Many of us drink at the wells of Buddhism and Taoism, although I think that trying to "merge" East and West is wrong. While Buddhism and Christianity arrive at many similar ideas about the nature of the world, the cosmologies of each are diametrically opposed; Christianity is as doggedly insistent on the reality of the world as Buddhism is on its illusory nature. Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe "Let Jakim with the Satyr, bless God in the Dance." C. Swift