Month: April 2012

More on the ban on Norwich church by Norwich council

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I wrote yesterday about the banning of a Norwich church by the City Council.  Thankfully the widely-read Cranmer blog has picked up on this disgraceful story.

This is the New Inquisition: the demand for theological orthodoxy has given way to prohibition of ‘feeling insulted’. And you might be next. Indeed, as His Grace has previously observed, this blog may well be closed down because someone (just one) complains to the police that religio-political polemic makes them feel uncomfortable and causes them distress; that they feel ‘insulted’, despite His Grace’s best efforts ‘to foster good relations between people of all backgrounds and religions’. This blog is, after all, a public space and His Grace is publishing alarming material. He probably not infrequently falls foul of equality and diversity demands, or transgresses the bounds of acceptability for those of other faiths or ‘disordered’(© Benedict XVI) sexual proclivities. His Grace never means to insult or cause distress, but the intention or motive is irrelevant: if the beholder feels offended, His Grace may be reported to the police under Section 5 of the Public Order Act, and they are obliged to investigate.

And now, if they determine that no crime has been committed, you can rely upon some jobsworth from bureaucratic officialdom to override the law and mete out their own brand of summary justice, with no indictments, no right of appeal, no juries, and no witnesses. This blog does not agree with all of Dr Clifford’s message, but, by God, it stands foursquare with him against the misuse and abuse of power by Norwich City Council.

And so does this blog.

A correspondent has pointed me to what is said to be the leaflet.  Since I understand that Norfolk police have advised that, despite everything, it violates none of our new and excitingly vague laws against saying what we think, I give it here.  It reads as follows:

WHY NOT ISLAM

The Inauguration of President Barack Obama is an alarming development. Behind his seductive charm and eloquent rhetoric lurks a dark and dangerous agenda. His speech should alert all who dimly perceive the world-wide Islamic threat. Yes, he challenged terrorists, but he also proposed cooperation with the Islamic world. Does he not realise that in one sentence he betrayed the ‘free world’?

1. WHY ISLAM IS NOT PEACEFUL

It is undeniable that Islam’s global jihadists – some quietly, others violently – are plotting the overthrow of all we have known for centuries. They are preparing for ‘USAistan’ and ‘UKistan’ in no uncertain terms! Tragically, our secularist Governments – which Islam aims to subjugate and replace in any case – are playing dangerous games by ignorantly distinguishing between militant and moderate Islam. The only difference between moderates and militants is between those who keep their mouths shut and those who don’t! Western Governments and other secularists are deluded by the deceptive mantra ‘Islam means peace’ (reinforced by the early, pre-abbrogated Sura 2: 256 and the frequently misquoted Sura 5: 32). But it means nothing of the kind! The Arabic word for ‘peace’ is ‘salaam’, the Hebrew equivalent being ‘shalom’. No, ‘Islam’ means ‘submission’, submission to Allah. The only sense in which the Pax Islama could mean ‘peace’ is when tribute-paying non-Muslims are silenced by conquest and reduced to a state of dhimminitude or ‘second class’ citizenship. To properly use Sir Iqbal Sacranie’s deceptive expression (used to shield Islam from its critics after 7/7) ‘the Qur’an is perfectly clear’, it states: ‘Make war on them: … Fight those who believe not in Allah … Nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are of the People of the Book, i.e. Jews and Christians), until they pay the jizyah with submission, and are utterly subdued’ (Sura 9: 14, 29).

2. WHY MUSLIMS ARE NOT ISLAMIC

Yes, you have read it correctly. Muslims are not really Muslims. They are properly called ‘Muhammadans’ – followers of their prophet Muhammad. The god they claim to submit to (the true meaning of ‘Islam’) is in reality the ancient pagan moon god of Arabia. For all their protestations against ‘idolatry’, their crescent moon symbol of Allah may be seen on every mosque. This imagined god is not to be confused with the living God who has uniquely revealed Himself in Jesus Christ. Since Muslims reject the true God, only acknowledged by true Christians, Christians alone are truly ‘islamic’ since they alone submit to God! Invoking an absurd piece of Islamic rhetoric, the Lord Jesus Christ was only a ‘muslim’ in the sense that He, as the Son of God, submitted Himself to the will of His heavenly Father. While Jesus may be regarded as a ‘muslim’ in this sense, Muslims are arguably not Muslims because they fail to submit to the living God! Their hostility to God in Christ makes them strictly ‘anti-muslim’!

 3. WHY THE WEST MUST SHUN ISLAM

So, Muslims need rescuing from Islam! At the same time, the West needs rescuing from Islam! To implement this twin rescue mission, two directives must be pursued:

1. Reliable information must be made available to community, educational, church and political leaders about authentic Islam. The loveless concept of Allah; the incoherence of the Qur’an; Islam’s appeal to the baser instincts of human nature; the degradation of women involving female circumcision and forced marriages; honour killings; the killing of apostates, its bloody jihadism and a fallaciously-promised erotic paradise for suicide bombers (murderers not martyrs); all these features must not be hidden. In responding to the growing threat, Western Governments are failing to face reality. The distinction between moderate and militant Islam misses the point that the religion itself is the source of the problem. Indeed, no other religion on earth can claim to match the violence of the Islamic agenda. Seemingly-benign Muslim communities will always be breeding grounds from which their more militant members can recruit jihadists.

2. With sensitive yet courageous compassion, Christians must use all proper means to evangelise Muslims. In the process, there must be no concessions to liberal as well as Muslim denials of the deity and grace of Jesus Christ, the Son of God and only Saviour of the world. In short, the case for the pure, life-transforming faith of biblical Christianity must be courageously made. On the religious education level, the RE component of National Curricula must ‘put the record straight’. Teachers must stop pretending that Jesus and Muhammad are on a par and that the Holy Bible and the Holy Qur’an teach similarly-positive values. Without denying that too often Christians have failed to demonstrate the compassionate virtues of its Founder, the true character of Muhammad’s programme and its devastating dictates must not be hidden from our children. Yes, the Christian Gospel forbids and condemns hatred and violence. The same cannot be said of the message of Muhammad. The children of Western schools must learn the difference between the mercy of the Sermon on the Mount and the hatred of the Hadith. The children of Muslim citizens must also be exposed to the purity of Christ and not the poison of Muhammad.

4. WHY JESUS CHRIST

With a continuing and growing assault on our Christian heritage, never was there a greater need to get to grips with the truth of the Bible text: ‘No man ever spoke like this man’ (John 7: 46). This was the response of amazed men who heard Christ. What truths explain their astonishment?

1. NO MAN EVER SPOKE LIKE JESUS CHRIST

And why? He was no ordinary man. He was perfect and sinless. He is the ‘God-man’ (Matthew 1: 23); ‘God manifest in the flesh’ (1 Timothy 3: 16); the Eternal ‘Word made flesh’ (John 1: 14).

Thus, He spoke words of truth, purity, love, kindness and compassion. He spoke with divine unction, grace and authority. No one else, before or since, ever spoke like Him. He is Creator, King, and Lord of the Universe.

On the other hand, Muhammad was an ordinary man. He was imperfect and sinful. He spoke words of error, impurity, hate and cruelty.

2. NO MAN EVER LIVED LIKE JESUS CHRIST

His life backed up His words. In lip and life, He was perfectly consistent. He brought blessing, healing, comfort and joy to people. His many miracles confirmed His deity.

His tender touch declared the compassion of God. He liberated women from the abusive treatment of selfish men. He rejected violence as a method of spreading His message. No life has ever been lived to match the life of Jesus Christ.

On the other hand, Muhammad’s life contradicted many of his more noble sayings. His life is not a good example for ‘private character’. His claims cannot compare with Christ’s. Spreading his message by the sword, he brought violence and bloodshed to those who refused to submit to his ‘Allah’. He humiliated women. His tenderness was reserved chiefly for his own sexual indulgence and his stomach (according to wife – one of fourteen – A’isha).

3. NO MAN EVER DIED LIKE JESUS CHRIST

While His life and preaching angered the religious establishment of His day, nothing could justify the hatred directed at Him. He was guilty of no sin. Expressing God’s mercy to us hell-deserving sinners, Jesus, Saviour of the world, died for our sins.

He died, ‘the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God’ (1 Peter 3: 18). In His agonizing crucifixion, He breathed nothing but love and kindness to His enemies. Such dying! Such love!

On the other hand, Muhammad died, burdened by his own guilt. Sadly and tragically, his death did not terminate his cruel conquests. Others perpetuated his vicious legacy.

 

4. NO MAN EVER BLESSED

THE HUMAN RACE

LIKE JESUS CHRIST

His impact on history is not just the effect of a perpetuation of His memory. Jesus rose from

the dead! He lives! The Gospel is the greatest blessing the world has ever known! It has

brought forgiveness, love, joy and peace. Christ has mended broken hearts and lives.

He has given hope to those in despair. Through Him, the light of heaven has dispelled the

darkness of death.

 

He has liberated individuals and nations. The Gospel has delivered people from

ignorance, slavery, poverty and degradation. All that is truly good, noble, pure and

beautiful comes from Him (even if apostate believers – crusading Roman Catholics and

deity-denying Protestant Liberals – have corrupted His truth). Christ’s resurrection

influence continues still where He is accepted, trusted and served.

 

On the other hand, Muhammad died, to rise no more, except to be judged by Christ when He

returns. His tomb is not empty. His legacy is ignorance, cruelty, fear and oppression. The

continued influence of his teachings is a threat to all that Christ represents.

 

In conclusion, the case for Christ and against Muhammad is compelling in every respect.

Assessed by every test that may be devised, there is simply no competition. So let us all

respond as did the men in our text! May we all acknowledge, believe, trust, love and

surrender to the incomparable Christ. May we all rejoice in Him, and seek to make Him

known throughout the world.

 

I am well aware that many in the secular West desire Christ no more than they desire

Muhammad. Therefore, I must warn them. Even if they never suffer from some jihadic

atrocity, they will stand before the judgement seat of Christ, when He returns to judge the

world in righteousness (see 2 Corinthians 5: 10).

 

While opportunity remains, come to Christ! If you are a Muslim, renounce Muhammad,

and come to Christ! Then, everything I have tried to express will become wonderfully and

experientially true. I invite you all to trust and serve Him with me. Amen!

 

Dr Alan C. Clifford

Norwich Reformed Church

 

www.nrchurch.co.nr

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Norwich Reform Church banned from meeting and from their own market stall by Norwich Council for “hate”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A BBC East report from yesterday (16/4/12):

Norwich Reformed Church banned for Islam ‘hate’ leaflet

A church has been banned from holding a weekly bookstall in Norwich following a complaint it was producing “hate-motivated” literature against Islam.

The Norwich Reformed Church held the stall on the city’s Hay Hill, which is owned by Norwich City Council.

The council has stopped the church using the site for equality reasons.

Pastor Alan Clifford said the church would appeal in the hope “the council will see sense and see how they are violating our freedom of speech”.

Mr Clifford wrote the leaflet, Why Not Islam, about 10 years ago. The church has been distributing the literature from Hay Hill since 2008.

‘High and mighty’

He said: “Our first response was one of surprise.

“We felt this a violation of freedom of speech and I was accused of hate motivation in producing this leaflet.

“It’s an intolerance from the city council acting in a high and mighty manner as we’ve had it confirmed by Norfolk Police – who’ve inspected the document – there is no crime involved.”

Masoud Gadir, Muslim chaplain at University of East Anglia and president of Norwich and Norfolk Muslim Association, said: “When you look at the leaflet it brings in hatred and scaremongers as to what Islam is.

“God has given us the mind and brain to think – not to follow any religion blindly.”

The Norwich Reformed Church, associated with the Farthing Trust, received notice from the council on 5 April that it would no longer be able to do outreach work on Hay Hill.

The authority has also advised the council-owned Eaton Park Community Centre not to take any further bookings from the church, which has used the centre as a place of worship since 1994.

A council spokesman said: “We received a complaint from a member of the public about material published by the Norwich Reformed Church which uses council facilities.

“This was considered to be hate motivated.”

The spokesman added that the police advised that no criminal offence had been committed, but the council had a “duty to foster good relations between people of all backgrounds and religions”.

The Farthing Trust is appealing against what it describes as the city council’s “dramatic action”.

The Norwich Evening News also have the story.

More details are accessible, courtesy of Max Farquar.  The leaflet was HERE in PDF form, but has sadly vanished.  The story is also mentioned here at the Happy Propagandist blog, who comments:

Unfortunately, [the law in question] is extremely vague and the criteria for breaking the law are entirely subjective. We all know some people who are taken aback by even the most minor of grievances.  This law also allows individuals or groups with ulterior agendas to target freedom of speech, at will. Consequently, the law needs to get a grip on the difference between ‘inciting religious hatred’ and simply voicing innocuous opinions, which we are all entitled to do (just about).  It also needs to define what ‘grossly offensive’ means.  I was of the opinion that one of the great things about a liberal society is that one does not have the right to ‘not be offended’.

It seems that the church have contacted the Christian Institute, and are taking legal advice.

Now I know that bookstall personally, because I pass it every time I visit Norwich.  It’s a tiny little table, with a little hut built around it, about 6 foot long in its largest dimension.  It’s unobtrusive, and innocuous in every way, as is the literature on it.  Yet, apparently, the council — paid for by the taxes of church members — can ban the stall, expel the church from a building paid for by taxpayers, even though no crime has been committed.

It is useless to complain that the council officials — nameless, of course — have acted in this manner.  Rather, a legal climate has been created in which those officials are afraid NOT to censor in this way.  I only learned of this case by accident.  Yet up and down the country, liberty is being interfered with, routinely, deliberately, without malice.  This is what comes of evil laws and bad government.

I would suggest that younger church members organise a sit-in at the next council meeting, notifying the local TV just before they do, and appear on TV being dragged out by the police or security.  Protest visibly, chaps.  It’s the only way.

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A Mithraeum in Iran? — The “Verjuy Mithra Temple”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A post by a headbanger on a crank site drew my attention to this page on the web:

Verjuy Mithra Temple, the Oldest Surviving Mithraist Temple in Iran

By: Afshin Tavakoli
Iran, Daily Newspaper
No. 2802, May. 16th, 2004, Page 12

Abstract:Maragheh is one of Iran’s most ancient cities having its roots in legends. In the past, its suburbs were used to build temples belonging to the religion of Mithraism. One of the temples is located 4 kilometers south of Maragheh in Verjuy village. There were no signs indicating the location of the temple in the village or even at the entrance of the cemetery. Among other main Mithraism temples in Maragheh, we can refer to hand made caves of the observatory hill.

… Followers of Mithraism built this temple during the Arsacid dynasty (248 BCE-224 CE) …

All around the main hall, there is Quranic inscriptions written in Naskhi script which circles around the walls and entrances like a belt. Parts of the inscription on walls, dating back to the Islamic period when this Mithraism temple was used as a monastery of Sufis or as a mosque, have been destroyed by the course of time.

In the brochure published recently by the Cultural Heritage Organization of Maragheh, the municipality and the governor’s office, these sentences are written about Mehr (Mithra) temple: 

“The historical site of Mehr temple and the shrine of Molla Masoum are located in the south of the historical cemetery of Verjuy village. Before the arrival of Islam, it was a place for worshiping the sun and a place for performing ceremonies by the followers of Mithraism. The building was probably built during the reign of Arsacid or possibly early Sassanid dynasties. After the arrival of Islam, it was used as a mosque and the shrine of Molla Masoum, a well-known intellectual in the 13th century.” 

The photograph next to these sentences shows a clean temple unlike the reality. Mehr in Avesta and Old-Persian was called Mithra and in Pahlavi language it was called Mithr. In Avesta, Mehr was considered to be one of the creators of Ahura Mazda and was the Yazats (Izad) of contract and promise and hence the god of light and brightness because nothing was kept secret from him. Mithraism reached Babylon and Asia Minor from Iran and it then reached Europe by Roman soldiers. Once in Europe, it was worshiped as a great god. After the appearance of Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda became known as the only God and other Aryan gods were considered Yazats or angels which actually resembled characters and the power of God. Mehr was among such Yazats.

All very odd, and none of it seemingly that reliable.  There are almost no references, for instance.  The article is from an Iranian daily newspaper, which uses a municipal leaflet as a source.

The site calls itself CAIS, the “Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies”, and the URL is www.cais-soas.com, as if the School for Oriental and Asiatic Studies were associated with it, although it no longer has any such association.

I thought that I would investigate further.  Nothing about this place looks like a Mithraeum.  No Mithraea are known from Iran.  So … why the Mithras reference?

The monument is described by Dr Arezou Azad.  She is discussing three cave complexes of the region, which seem to be medieval Buddhist.[1]  Here is the start of the description, from p.219:

2. Mihri Temple / Imamzada Ma’sum (Near Maragha)

Previous studies.  The first archaeologist to describe this site was Parviz Varjavand in the early 1970’s.  Warwick Ball provided a more accurate overview by factoring in the inscriptions and decorated stonework in the complex, as well as the adjacent cemetary, and a more detailed floor plan.(37)  …

Observations.  In the outskirts of Maragha lies the site of the Mihri Temple, also known as the Imamzada Ma’sum.  This site is far less known than the last, although it is just as mysterious, and therefore deserves more attention.  The site has three accessible areas: a main space surrounded by four domed chambers (nos. 2, 4, 5, 6, 7); a four-domed hall with a full-size pillar at its centre (no. 3); and a set of three long chambers some 100 metres away.

(37) Parviz Varjavand, ‘The Imamzadeh Ma’sum Varjovi near Maragheh’, East and West 25/3-4 (1975), p.435-8 …; Warwick Ball, ‘The Imamzadeh Ma’sum at Vardjovi. A rock-cut Ilkhanid Complex near Maragheh’, Archaologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 12 (1979), p. 329-40.

And on the article goes, with nothing Mithraic that I could see (although the preview was cut-off  before the end).

A little earlier, on p.217-8, there is discussion of another cave complex in the area, the Rasadkhana caves at Maragha.

Function and dating.   The rectangular stone blocks in chambers a and b were identified as altars, and hence the chambers as sanctuaries.  To Ball they looked like the Buddhist circumambulatory pillar-caves of Afghanistan and Central Asia, and to Bowman and Thompson like the Jacobite style of dual sanctuaries.  I would also note a resemblance to the Sasanian fire altars of Balkh.  Ker Porter wrote: ‘These secluded places [i.e. the caves] we are told, were not merely the habitations of Zoroaster himself and his Magi, but were used as temples.'(27)  In the cave temples of the Mithraists (or Mithraea), altars of such dimensions can also be found.(28)  An ancient Mithraic use is likely  given the similarities with Roman Mithraic temples, but it is the Ilkhanid period that is of greater interest to us.

(27) Porter, Travels in Georgia, Persia, Armenia, vol. 2, p.496.
(28) See Varjavand, Kawish-i Rasadkhana-yi Maragha, p.279-83.  On the history and belief system of Mithraism which developed with the conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE, see Franz Cumont, Les mysteres de Mithra, Brussels (1913) and Taufiq Wahby, The remnants of Mithraism in Hatra and Iraqi Kurdistan and its traces in Yazidism, London (1962).

The list of diverse possible parallels at the front of the quote makes it abundantly clear that we are in speculation land. 

I have mentioned before how unreliable statements about Mithras can be in academic books, and it seems that we have another example here. 

The 19th century traveller Porter “is told” that Zoroaster himself lived there.  This can only be local folklore.  But aside from that, we then have the repetition (for the author is not a Mithras scholar) of material from Iranian sources of the Royalist period, every one of whom believed in the Cumontian idea  that Persian Mithra was the same as Roman Mithras.  The latter view is contradicted by the archaeology, and can no longer simply be presumed.  And without that identification, what becomes of all this?  It falls to the ground.

I should add, in fairness to the author of the article, that while I was unable to view p.215, I found there the following snippet:

The Iranian archaeologist Parviz Varjavand described them in the late 1980’s, and emphasized their ancient Mithraic elements, bringing us back to where Porter started in the early nineteenth century: relying on folklore and projecting…

which suggests that the author is in fact well aware of how shaky all this material is.

It would seem, then, that there is, in fact, no evidence associating Mithras (or, I think, even Mithra) with either site.

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  1. [1]Arezou Azad, Three rock-cut cave sites in Iran and their Ilkhanid Buddhist aspects reconsidered, in: Anna Akasoy and others, Islam and Tibet: Interactions Along the Musk Routes, Ashgate, 2001, p.209-230.  There is a Google Books preview here.↩

“Christians vilified” in Britain — yes or no?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The headline story in the Daily Telegraph today is about a submission by George Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, to a court case before the European Court of Human Rights. 

Britain’s Christians are being vilified, warns Lord Carey

Christians are being “persecuted” by courts and “driven underground” in the same way that homosexuals once were, a former Archbishop of Canterbury has warned.

Lord Carey says worshippers are being “vilified” by the state, treated as “bigots” and sacked simply for expressing their beliefs.

The attack is part of a direct appeal to the European Court of Human Rights before a landmark case on religious freedom.

In a written submission seen by The Daily Telegraph, the former leader of more than 70 million Anglicans warns that the outward expression of traditional conservative Christian values has effectively been “banned” in Britain under a new “secular conformity of belief and conduct”.

His comments represent one of the strongest attacks on the impartiality of Britain’s judiciary from a religious leader.

He says Christians will face a “religious bar” to employment if rulings against wearing crosses and expressing their beliefs are not reversed.

Lord Carey argues that in “case after case” British courts have failed to protect Christian values. He urges European judges to correct the balance.

The hearing, due to start in Strasbourg on Sept 4, will deal with the case of two workers forced out of their jobs over the wearing of crosses as a visible manifestation of their faith. It will also take in the cases of Gary McFarlane, a counsellor sacked for saying that he may not be comfortable in giving sex therapy to homosexual couples, and a Christian registrar, who wishes not to conduct civil partnership ceremonies.

Lord Carey, who was archbishop from 1991 to 2002, warns of a “drive to remove Judaeo-Christian values from the public square”. Courts in Britain have “consistently applied equality law to discriminate against Christians”.

They show a “crude” misunderstanding of the faith by treating some believers as “bigots”. He writes: “In a country where Christians can be sacked for manifesting their faith, are vilified by State bodies, are in fear of reprisal or even arrest for expressing their views on sexual ethics, something is very wrong.

“It affects the moral and ethical compass of the United Kingdom. Christians are excluded from many sectors of employment simply because of their beliefs; beliefs which are not contrary to the public good.”

He outlines a string of cases in which he argues that British judges have used a strict reading of equality law to strip the legally established right to freedom of religion of “any substantive effect”.

“It is now Christians who are persecuted; often sought out and framed by homosexual activists,” he says. “Christians are driven underground. There appears to be a clear animus to the Christian faith and to Judaeo-Christian values. Clearly the courts of the United Kingdom require guidance.”

He says the human rights campaign has gone too far and become a political agenda.

The article is not a particularly sympathetic one, and gives us little idea of the context from which Dr Carey’s words have been excerpted.  I think it is reasonable to ask who sent the submission to the Telegraph, and with what motives.

The article in the Belfast Telegraph is headed, ‘Vilified’ Christians ‘fear arrest’, but is based on the Telegraph article.

What are we to make of this? 

The background is that there has been a concerted effort in Britain in recent years to create case law which has the effect that a Christian must conform to newly created laws which seem designed to attack Christian beliefs. 

In particular an individual named Ben Summerskill — son of a prominent Labour politican — and his gay campaigning group Stonewall seem to be behind much of the mischief.  It is said that he presented a list of demands for laws, in favour of gays and criminalising opposition to them, to Tony Blair, a decade ago, who agreed to enact them all.  It is certainly the case that he sent agents provocateurs to the home of an elderly Christian couple who offered “bed and breakfast” to visitors to demand that these two gays should be given a double room to practice their vice in, with the expectation of being refused and reporting the couple to the police under the laws which he himself had drawn up.  The object of this hateful exercise was to drag his victims through the courts, and in the process create case law which would prevent Christians running hotels unless he permitted it.  A list of his misdeeds would doubtless make interesting reading, but there seems no special need to dwell on them here.

Times of bigotry and intolerance inevitably produce men like Summerskill, men adept at manipulating people in power in order to achieve their own evil ends, and subsequent ages look with revulsion on such people, and wonder why men allowed them to flourish. 

But God allows such things, in order that the difference between good and evil shall become clear.  It is easy enough to see the difference between those who claim the name of Christian, but whose “god” is merely a servant to Summerskill and his ilk; and those who follow God himself, at whatever cost.   The suffering of the confessors — we have yet to have martyrs — is the seed of the church.

But … “vilified”?  Is that right?  Are Christians, is Christianity vilified in Britain?

Years ago, I went to see progressive rock group Yes at the old Wembley Arena.  This was their “90125” tour, which featured a song about vice in the city called “City of Love”.  As singer Jon Anderson introduced the song, he referred to a “city of love … a city of sin …”.  When he said the word “sin”, the whole arena, probably 100,000 people, shivered, including me.  Everyone was nervous that a sermon was about to follow.  Yet Anderson is not a Christian, and the line was just a throwaway.  That involuntary reaction shows us that there has been some powerful negative conditioning in our land towards religious themes.

Surely we all know that it is embarassing to evangelise, to share the gospel?  That it is embarassing to be known as a Christian at work?  That to do so is to invite an unfriendly scrutiny, and a jeer when, in vexation, we allow some expletive to pass our lips?  We’re accustomed to this, we’ve never known anything different.

But … why is it embarassing?  Is it not that we are all — Christian and non-Christian — in possession of attitudes that make it nearly impossible for us to feel otherwise? 

And what shapes our attitudes?  What was it that created the attitudes that made 100,000 people shiver at Wembley, that evening?  It was, of course, the “climate of the times”, as we might call it.  The “media agenda of this country” might be another term. 

If we look at how Christianity and Christians are portrayed in our mass media, in every way that anyone ever learns about anything, do we not see hostility?  Do we not see contempt?  Do we ever find that the Christian character in a drama is ever portrayed as anything but a weirdo, a creep, a bigot, a hypocrite and, in our police dramas, not infrequently as a murderer?

We’re used to it.  Like a fish, we hardly see it.  It’s normal.

But … it is NOT normal.  We see how individuals like Summerskill manipulate the political climate to normalise a hideous vice.  Why do we doubt that other individuals, no less cynical, manipulate the same environment to make a world in which fornication is normal, abortion routine, and any interference with the same is shouted down or grounds for sacking?  The selfish generation had only one creed: “if it feels good, do it”.  We know that this was all about sex; and we have discovered that the same creed has rotted the quality of care in our hospitals, and the integrity of our major companies.  Why do we suppose that this same rotten attitude does not determine what is “normal” in our society, when it controls all the levers for shaping public opinion?

Dr Carey is right.  In modern Britain Christians are indeed vilified.  

This is not, necessarily, a new thing.  It has always been rather risky to be a Christian.  I read this morning, in the Collected Essays and Addresses of the excellent Augustine Birrell, how the commands of religion no longer commanded the assent of most people.  That essay was dated 1904.[1] 

But the efforts of Summerskill, and those like him or sympathetic to him, are creating a new thing.  They are creating a climate of systematic, structural, legal discrimination against Christians.  “Your faith or your job” is the cry.  Christians may not run adoption agencies, thanks to Summerskill; he is determined that they may not run hotels, may not decide who does or does not stay in their own homes if they offer B&B; may not wear crosses in workplaces where turbans may be worn; and so on, seemingly endlessly.  It matters nothing whether Jews — or Christians, or any other respectable group — are prevented from working by a law that says it explicitly, or by a law which has the same effect by deliberately requiring them to violate their beliefs.

The case before the Euro-court is well-judged.  It is a political body; but it is unlikely to rule against the interests of French and Italian Catholics.

In the meantime let us pray for England, where such evil is intended and being put into effect.  We have not had to deal with a season of deliberate, malevolent harassment for nearly two centuries. 

We might also pray for Ben Summerskill.  For, as Tertullian remarks in Ad Scapulam, those who seek to do evil to God’s people tend to live short and unhappy lives; and it is our duty, not to threaten, but to pray.

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  1. [1]UPDATE: But my memory deceived me when I wrote this.  I was thinking of an essay in volume 2 of that work, entitled Marie Bashkirtseff, wherein he writes on p.263, “The eclipse of faith has not proved fatal by any means to the instinct of confession.”  By the mysterious alchemy of memory this became the statement above.↩

Digitising the manuscripts of Lorsch

Posted on by Roger Pearse

After my last post, I started looking for evidence of the work of Heidelberg university in digitising Vatican manuscripts.  To my astonishment, I found a website for the now vanished library of the abbey of Lorsch!  It seems that a team from Heidelberg have been attempting to recreate this Dark Ages library, full of very interesting manuscripts, and destroyed and scattered during the Thirty Years War.  Here they discuss their work.

133 manuscripts, which once formed part of the Carolingian monastic library Lorsch, are integrated nowadays into the valuable and large collection of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. In 1622/23 the manuscripts were brought to Rome as part of Heidelberg’s Bibliotheca Palatina. For its digitization project “Bibliotheca Laureshamensis – digital” Heidelberg University Library was permitted to digitize the Lorsch manuscripts on the premises of the Vatican Library in Rome. Thus, in November 2010 a digitization centre was set up in Rome in cooperation with the Vatican Library for the digitization of the manuscripts. The digitization of the entire Lorsch manuscripts in Rome was completed within eight months by a team of six.

The list of all the manuscripts once part of Lorsch is here. 

The Vatican library manuscripts online are listed here.  Many are biblical manuscripts, most are 9th century.  There are gems for us, tho: Arnobius the Younger, Hilary of Poitiers, Ps.Hegesippus, Ambrosiaster, Jerome, Augustine, Marius Mercator, Paulinus of Nola, Orosius, Cassiodorus, Bede, Isidore, Jordanes … the list goes on.  Just look for yourself at the list!

I can’t resist noting Pal. lat. 822, a copy of Rufinus’ translation of Eusebius’ Church History.  Or the presence of Macrobius and the Historia Augusta in Pal. lat. 886, foll. 125-189.  Or two works by Sallust, the conspiracy of Cataline, and the Jugurthine War, in Pal. lat. 887 and Pal. lat. 889.  Cicero, Seneca, Fulgentius Mythographicus, Vergil … yes, and a Servius’ Commentary on Vergil… And whoa!  There’s a 10th century manuscript of Juvenal, Pal. lat. 1701!

Then there are three medieval catalogues of the library at Lorsch, as it was, in Pal. lat. 1877.  These have been published, and are found in G. Becker’s Catalogi Bibliothecarum Antiqui, in doubtless not very reliable form.  But here are the originals!

Finally, fancy a look at Cyprian?  Try Reg. lat. 118.

OK, there’s not a lot there that causes me, this instant, to click on it.  But then only a manuscript of Pliny the Elder would do that, just at the moment!

Why have I never heard of this?

UPDATE: But … oh good grief, what is this??!?!  I tried clicking on one of the mss, and got the following: 

No wonder I have never heard of all this.  Who, one wonders, was so STUPID as to do this?  To do all that work, and then, greedily, HIDE the images!!!

Sometimes I despair, I really do.

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Vatican (and Bodleian?) Greek manuscripts to go online?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Mike Aquilina writes to tell me about a new manuscript digitisation initiative.  The BBC has an article on the story:

Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries and the Vatican’s Biblioteca Apostolica plan to digitise 1.5 million ancient texts to make them available online.

The two libraries announced the four-year project after receiving a £2m award from the Polonsky Foundation.

Dr Leonard Polonsky said his aim was to ensure researchers and the public have free access to historic and rare texts.

Greek manuscripts, 15th Century printed books and Hebrew early printed books and manuscripts will be digitised.  …

Two thirds of the material will come from the Vatican Library and the rest from the Bodleian.

Well done, Dr Polonsky!!

The Catholic News Service adds:

The Bodleian-Vatican Library digitized collections will be in three subject areas: Greek manuscripts, incunabula and Hebrew manuscripts.

According to the Bodleian, the subject areas were chosen because both libraries have strong collections in those areas and because of the collections’ importance to scholars. The project will bring together online “materials that have been dispersed between the two collections over the centuries,” the Bodleian press release said.

Some 800 Vatican incunabula will be digitised, they say.

The Vatican Radio site indicates (in French only!) that 1.5 million pages from manuscripts and incunables will be digitised.  Scanning of manuscripts is already underway.  The Vatican has 80,000 manuscripts and 8,900 incunables, and has been experimenting with digitisation since 2010.  And the Prefect of the Vatican Library, Mgr Pasini, adds:

«La quantité des manuscrits numérisés grandit grâce aussi au travail du Laboratoire de reproduction et aussi aux projets visés, en collaboration avec les institutions culturelles : ainsi est en cours de réalisation la numérisation des manuscrits Palatins latins, en collaboration avec l’Université de Heidelbert. »

“The quantity of digitised manuscripts is increasing thanks also to the work of the Laboratory of reproduction, and also to existing projects, in collaboration with cultural institutions: in this way the digitisation of the ‘Palatine’ Latin manuscripts is in progress, in collaboration with the University of Heidelbert.“

I presume that should read “Heidelberg”, capital of the Rheinland Palatinate. The “Palatine” collection came from there to the Vatican, as part of the settlement of the Thirty Years War.  Now that by itself is quite exciting news, for the Codici Latini Palatini are some of the most important Vatican Latin manuscripts. 

There are some Hebrew texts of no special interest here.  But there is more:

En ce qui concerne les manuscrits grecs, seront enfin numérisés d’importants témoins des œuvres d’Homère, de Sophocle, de Platon, d’Hippocrate, ainsi que des codex du Nouveau Testament et des Pères de l’Eglise, dont un grand nombre sont richement décorés de miniatures byzantines.

As for the Greek manuscripts, finally some important witnesses will be digitised of the works of Homer, Sophocles, Plato, Hippocrates, as well as some codices of the New Testament and the Fathers of the Church, of which a great number are richly decorated with Byzantine miniatures.

Hum.  Well, “pretty-pretty” books are of no real interest other than to a tiny number of art historians, but at least we see recognition of “important witnesses” to the text of various authors.  And it will include patristic authors.

The story appears elsewhere, but there seem to be no additional details.

It’s very good news!  And all thanks to Dr Leonard Polonsky, and his Polonsky Foundation.  Apparently the man has form, working with the Bodleian to digitise material and paying for the work.  A man after my own heart, this.

It is good to see that Dr. Polonsky makes clear his motivation: to make stuff accessible to us all.  If I might suggest something, Dr. P?  Make sure the libraries make the books downloadable as PDF’s, whatever other way they make the stuff accessible.  Given half a chance they will lock the images away.

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Use DuckDuckGo instead of Google search?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Marcel at Monday Evening today has written possibly one of the most important posts that I have read for some time.

Google grew and profited because it was useful. It made finding stuff on the web easier, it made email easier, and it made a good rss feed reader. Then Google became a threat to privacy, or people like me who should have known finally saw the threat they had always been. So using Google became a tradeoff, but I was usually willing to accept it because Google made things easier.

Now Google is becoming an obstacle to overcome. Google Reader has got to be too much trouble to use, so I’m back to open-all-in-tabs. Gmail keeps moving stuff around (recently the log-out button), and they’re always pestering me about something: give them my phone number; read their privacy policy; sign up for Google+. It was creepy when they started asking me if I wanted to cc random people, but I put up with it. Interposing these nag screens between me and my email is going to be the last straw that sends me back to Thunderbird.

Their search results page is increasingly crufty, and I have to watch that they aren’t “customizing” the results just for me. I use DuckDuckGo whenever I can, then Bing, and then Google search if I must. …

I was not even aware of DuckDuckGo, but I tried it out this evening and the results were no worse than Google’s, and probably a bit better.  And at least they aren’t fiddling with the results to show me what some wretched algorithm imagines I wanted to see last time I searched, as Google is.

The privacy concerns are real, and I worry about them more.

And yes, Google is getting very careless. 

I don’t like the new Google Mail interface, so I am using the old one, and putting up with the nagging.  I don’t like the new Google Groups interface — the first version, indeed, was buggy and didn’t even allow you to search! — and have stuck with the old one and, of course, the nagging.  I don’t really like Google Reader’s interface, although I can live with it.

I don’t like the way that I can’t even find some things any more in the main search engine.  I don’t like the way that they broke the Google groups search, and barely bother to fix it.  It’s often broken, and slothfully repaired.  I hate the Google Books searches, which are so bad that it is often better to find books through Archive.org.

You know, Marcel has a point. 

I’m not anti-Google.  I remember loathing directed at IBM, when it was dominant.  When IBM’s star waned, and that of Microsoft rose, somehow Big Blue became cuddly, while Micro$oft became the Great Satan.  Now it’s Google’s turn.  Such opposition is not meaningful.

But Google are getting lazy and sloppy.  And … now they don’t subscribe to their old motto, “Don’t be evil” … how far can we trust them with all our data?

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Would it really be so difficult to determine how chapter divisions are marked in all surviving ancient books?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The question of chapter divisions and headings in ancient literary and technical texts is a long term interest of mine, as anyone who chooses to look may discover by clicking on the tag at the end of this post.  We find, in later medieval texts, that these ancient texts are often divided, not merely into books, but also into chapters, with chapter headings.  It does not seem well known or classified, just how often we find this.  Chapter divisions and titles are a cinderella subject, largely ignored or treating in passing.

In my last post, I looked at what chapter divisions and titles there were in a renaissance manuscript of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History.  The NH is an interesting work to investigate, for this subject, since the author states in the preface that book 1 of the work is a list of capituli.  So we do know that these items existed in the autograph, whereas we generally have no such certainty in other works. 

Capituli, or “subject headings”, are perhaps just a list of topics covered, in the order in which they appear in the text.  There is no necessity to suppose that the text was formally divided into “chapters”, in the manner of a modern work –indeed some of the capituli refer to no more than a handful of lines of text, before the next capitulum appears in the margin, so we might better say “sections” — and we can see that in the Pliny ms. it is not. 

So while the English word “chapter” perhaps derives from the Latin capitulum — or does it?  Do we know this, and if so, how? — the term is perhaps one that is rather different.  Perhaps we need a word study of the appearance of the English word, and how it was originally used, and how it came to mean what it means today.  Is it used to translate capitulum in medieval English texts?  There is clearly a research project here.

Likewise we ought to locate all uses of the term capituli in ancient literature — and likewise the Greek kephalaia — and from this determine its meaning or meanings, and any change that they underwent during the ancient and medieval period.  This might begin with an electronic search, and it really should not take more than a couple of weeks to do.

But finally … we need to look at ancient books themselves, and see just what is in the margins, or gathered at the start of books, or whatever.  Do we have chapter titles marked?  Are they  numbered?  Are there collections of them at the start of the book, in a multi-book history?  Or is it a case that the early mss just have a list of topics at the start of each book, and that these are mirrored in the body of the work, gradually, by subsequent readers and copyists?  Which works have these elements?

It sounds like a large task.  But is it?  A commenter on my last post pointed out that, in some ways, it is a superficial task.  All we have to do is look through the manuscript at a high level.  And that may not be so hard to do.

For the number of actual ancient books is not that great.  The Codices Latini Antiquiores of E. A. Lowe lists all the fragments of ancient Latin books.  The number of codices which are more or else intact is probably not that great.  I don’t know about Greek mss from antiquity, but surely there is a list somewhere?

Nor does it necessarily involve a lot of travel.  The IRHT in France has a huge collection of microfilms of manuscripts.  Admittedly this is not nearly as good as colour images — and whether a link is in red ink or black might well be important here — but a couple of weeks work at a microfilm reader in Orleans might well answer many of these questions, and provide a base of data from which some solid conclusions might be drawn.  It sounds like a solid piece of work for a PhD thesis, for a student who is prepared to work hard.

I feel tempted myself; but of course I am not an academic, and I don’t have the time.  Sadly, I fear, I don’t have the energy any more either!  But the whole question of chapter divisions, titles, etc, is one that simply needs a pioneer to go into it.  It’s not that hard to do; just that no-one has really attacked it. 

I’ve always thought of the task of working out the history of the chapter titles for endless different literary and technical works was one that would require an army of scholars.  Indeed a great manuscript scholar once wrote to me that it would require scholarly collaboration.

But why not simply examine what is in all the surviving ancient codices, up to the 8th century, and publish details of what is to be found therein?

How long would that really take?

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Chapter titles in Pliny the Elder

Posted on by Roger Pearse

With the new availability online of images of the British Library ms. Harley MS 2676 (Pliny the Elder, Historia naturalis,  Florence, 1465-1467), we can now investigate just how the chapter titles are presented in a manuscript.

Technical note: there seems to be no way to link directly from here to the pages in question.  Ideally I would link the images below direct to the full page, so that readers could scroll around and examine for themselves, but sadly this does not seem to be possible.

In this manuscript, there is first a list of books, with a numeral at the front.  Then there are the chapter titles, gathered by book, but … with no chapter numeral at the front of each title!  Here is a screen grab of folio 2r, where the titles for book 2 (book 1 is a preface) appear, and the numerals do not:

It is unlikely that a humanist copyist would have removed the numerals, so I think we may take it that they were not present in the ancestor copies either.

And how do the titles appear in book 2, in the body of the text?  They appear, naturally, without numerals either, as marginalia.  Here is folio 20v (there seems to be no way to link directly to the page):

But here is the rub: the “titles” are not the same.  In the contents, the first title is “de forma eius” — “concerning its form” — which references the preceding sentence that indicates the book is about the world.  The next title, “de motu”, is the same in both.

Each of these titles has an initial.  But the third title, lower down the page, does not.  There is no paragraph break either: 

 

It is left to the reader to determine where, if anywhere, the break should be.  The paragraph breaks, the initials, do not relate to the chapter titles, then.

But … were the marginal chapter titles even present in earlier manuscripts?  Or were these placed where they are by the humanist copyist?

In book 1, which has no chapter titles, we find what are plainly renaissance glosses, highlighting a mention of Cicero, for instance, written in the column to the side.  Similar notes seem to appear later: on f.22r there is a marginal note “pythagoras”, written as if it was a chapter title.

The answer to this must appear from looking at more, and older, manuscripts.

All the same, we do see that numbering chapter titles in the body of the text was not something that just happened naturally, since these have none.  They seem, indeed, more like “headings”, indicating content, than chapter divisions as we would have them.  And indeed, “capituli” is precisely that … “headings”!

Perhaps we should take the Latin more seriously, and modern habits of book making rather less so.

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New BL mss online: technical texts

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learn from the British Library manuscripts blog that a further bunch of manuscripts from the Harley collection have now been placed online at their site, courtesy of funding by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation.  These are described as “science manuscripts”, which of course covers a multitude of things, not all of them interesting to us.  The majority are of medieval texts.  But it includes a number of ancient technical texts.

We’re all familiar with ancient literary texts: Herodotus, Cicero, Livy, Tertullian, St. Augustine, and so forth.  But the technical literature of antiquity is much less well known, and much of it has barely been edited.  Very little exists in English.  This category includes medical handbooks, astrological works, and many others.

Skimming over the BL site, I note these manuscripts of works by ancient technical authors:

  • Harley MS 1585 Illustrated compilation of texts on herbs and making up medicines (Netherlands, 12th century) including various late-antique texts.
  • Harley MS 2650 Martianus Capella, De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii, book 8 (=De astronomia) (France or England, 12th century)
  • Harley MS 2660 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae and De natura rerum (Germany, 1136), plus four letters of Isidore.
  • Harley MS 2676 Pliny the Elder, Historia naturalis (Florence, 1465-1467)
  • Harley MS 2766 Iulius Firmicus Maternus, Mathesis (Italy, 15th century), the astrological compendium.
  • Harley MS 3015 Miscellany including Bede’s De natura rerum (England, 12th century) specifically: — (f. 1v); John Chrysostom, Homilies 1-30 (ff. 2r-62r); Augustine of Hippo, Sermones (Sermo 173) (ff. 63r- 64v);Isidore of Seville, De Differentis (ff. 65v-89r); Bede, De Natura Rerum (ff. 90r-99r); Anselm, De libero arbitrio (ff. 100r-108r).
  • Harley MS 3022 Collection of texts on theology, instruction and natural history (Italy, 14th century) — 1. Giles of Rome (Aegidius Romanus), De regimine principum (ff. 1r-32r); 2. Aristotle, De natura animalium (ff. 32v-54v);3. The Life of St Veridianus (ff. 55r-57v);4. Cassiodorus, Varia (ff. 57v-67v);5. Cassiodorus, De anima (ff. 68r-79v);6. Augustine, Speculum (ff. 80r-83v); 7. Augustine, Soliloquia (ff. 83v-128v);8. Pseudo-Augustine, Liber de vita Christiana (ff. 129r-139v).
  • Harley MS 3035 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae and De natura rerum (Germany, 1495) — much the same as the earlier one, but with five letters of Isidore. 

The one that stands out for me is the ms. of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, and for an unusual reason.  The work was given chapter divisions by Pliny himself, as the preface indicates.  But did he also mark them in the text?  Were there numerals in the margins?  The colloquium on meta-textual elements at Chantilly in 1994 contained a paper discussing this, and noting that the editors of Pliny were “fort discrets” on these points.

It would be most interesting to know.  Ideally we would want pre-humanist manuscripts, of course; but it would still be interesting to know what this manuscript has.

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