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Assessing a papyrus: is scholarship less valuable than science?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Mark Goodacre (with whom I disagree profoundly on almost everything, I suspect) has an article at his blog today about the papyrus fragment which has been called the “Gospel of Jesus’ Wife” and is under suspicion of being a forgery.  He raises an interesting point:

Another theme that has emerged in some discussions has been a kind of dualism between “science” and textual study, with the suggestion that “science” alone will be able to settle the question of authenticity, and that textual scholarship is a kind of parlour game that can be played by anyone.  The way that scholarship actually works is as a collaborative enterprise, in which different scholars study the evidence, talk to one another, try out ideas, put forward hypotheses and test them.  Physical examination of manuscripts has a very important role to play in discussions like this, but it is one part of the discussion, not inately superior to the work done by experts on Coptology, papyrology, textual criticism, source criticism and so on.

I agree with this, to a considerable degree.  I think there is mixed thinking in the public mind. 

Perhaps my own thoughts will be of wider interest, as someone with a hard science degree of the hardest kind, who has pursued an interest in manuscript and textual studies.

If you can put something to do with a manuscript into a test-tube and boil it until it turns blue (or red, or whatever), you will be able to ascertain something definite.  Unfortunately that something will probably be very limited.  In the case of the papyrus, it should be possible to carbon date the papyrus material, and do some form of chemical analysis of the ink.  The date that will emerge for the papyrus will tell us whether the material is ancient or modern.  The ink analysis, if there is enough to work with, will tell us whether the writer used chemicals unknown in manuscripts universally agreed to be ancient.

These are good things to do.  They are destructive, however, so we must be wary.  But they will give us results, within the range of accuracy of the technology.  They will give us data.

But other data is also available from scholarship, which is not inferior in kind.  Someone who has seen many, many fragments of Coptic papyri will be able to tell us, in a systematic, detailed, referenced way, whether the writing has features not seen in other fragments.  The statement that he makes is just as much a fact as the output of C-14.  Either there are other examples of papyri which have some quirk of writing in them; or there are not.

Likewise a scholar can compile a list of all the manuscripts which have a date on them, with examples of the kind of handwriting then in vogue.  With this list it is easy to pick out something which does not fit; that is supposedly of one date, yet written in a hand unknown at the time.  This again is data.  This is the discipline of paleography. 

Paleography can be taken too far.  Dates may be given which, in reality, are based on inference upon inference.  Alin Suciu tells us that there are no worthwhile dates for any Coptic papyri.  Brent Nongbri has asserted that all the dates for 2nd century Greek papyrus fragments are basically rubbish (albeit in a paper with an openly stated motive for getting rid of certain dates).  And here we enter the thorny field of what is good scholarship, and what is bad. 

Here scholarship does differ from science.  It is much easier for scholarship to drift away from the data, and into something which is in fact opinion-driven.   It is easy, because scholarship has only one mechanism to prevent this drift, which is the process of peer-review; and it doesn’t work, when there is any question of politics or religion, because in any country the opinions of academics on controversial subjects commonly reflect the views of those who control academic appointments.  For instance, if we look at papers in patristics published in the 19th century, we can easily see the Catholic and Protestant papers. 

This is the problem with scholarship.  There is marvellous work done within the field.  But there is a real need for some kind of structural change.  There needs to be a better mechanism to exclude material which is (whether intentionally or not) unscholarly.  In some disciplines, particularly those with a static data base, the statements of the academy as to the “consensus of scholars” are of no value as a guide to fact.  And this is, in truth, well known in the world in general.

My own academic training is in Chemistry, which is definitely one of the “hard sciences”.   I remember, at college, that I didn’t consider scholarship to be worth much.  It was, I thought, merely a bunch of people decorating their prejudices with the results of a library search.  I believed that I could probably write anything they had to say myself, given a bit of time.

I suspect that such an opinion is widespread among science undergraduates even today.  I suspect that it lurks in the public mind generally. 

Nor is it entirely an unfair attitude.   There are academic disciplines which justify this kind of thinking.  We all remember sociology, and how it enjoyed wide esteem in the eyes of the media in the 70’s.  “Sociologist” and “left wing lunatic” seemed almost synonymous then.  It crashed and burned in the 80’s, when times changed.  Does anyone now study that, I wonder?  It was a pseudo-discipline, in practice if not in theory.  Economics had a narrow brush with the same disaster in the same period, but redeemed itself.

One reason why I myself held this view, even though I was interested in ancient history even then, was the sort of books about biblical scholarship found on shelves at Blackwells’ bookshop.  I was somewhat interested in what they had to say.  But I found that it was only necessary to read a page or two of this to feel both a deep contempt for them and what they were doing.  It was entirely opinion-driven, rather than data-driven.  A couple of simple questions — “how do I know that this is true?” and “where is the evidence that you didn’t just make this up?” — were usually enough to terminate my interest in them.  I came to a different mind only when I happened to read T. D. Barnes, Tertullian: a literary and historical study (1971).  That book I knew that I could not have written, however long I spent in a library.  That was my first encounter with real scholarship.

The truth was that the books that I had seen — I have no memory of which they were — were examples of bad scholarship.  They were not representative of all scholarship.

In a similar way, most ordinary people would run a mile rather than hear a sermon.  The word itself, in the popular mind, is synonymous with woolly sanctimonious empty tedium.  That impression, no doubt, is based mainly on TV portrayals, and perhaps the memory of schooldays when the padre got up and said something meaningless.  But when I went to a real church, I heard real sermons.  My original impression of a sermon was really a memory of bad sermons, not of all sermons.

The solution to this problem is to stop doing bad scholarship.  Do good scholarship.  And devise a method to know the difference, and implement it.

Whether this is something that can be achieved by academics, or whether in fact it will require a change to our universities I cannot say.  But some scholarship deserves better than it gets.

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Life of Mar Aba – chapter 33

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The hagiographical Life of the East Syriac Catholicos Mar Aba continues thus:

33. After the Mobed spoke thus to the Lordly one, the latter instructed him extensively from the Holy Scriptures on the true faith, the permanence of Christianity, the greatness of the economy of God, about the resurrection and the judgement, about the blessings which are prepared for the righteous in heaven, and the punishments which are prepared for the wicked in eternal hell with Satan and the devils.

When the Mobed heard this, he was seized with amazement and fear; he clapped his hands together at the great manysidedness and invincibility of these thoughts, and he stood up and recognised and praised God.  Then the Lordly one said, “Go and tell them: I am the servant of God and I do not transgress the command of my Lord, who says, ‘Go into all nations and baptise them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.’  I shall not go to eternal Hell with Satan and the devils; I am not afraid of the long agony of passing time, and I do not confuse the true life and eternal blessings with the corruptible (blessings) of this impermanent world.” When the Mobed went and said this to the Magians, they marvelled at the courage of the Lordly one and said, “You see that he does not obey us and does not give way so that we might release him from his fetters.  Now he can only blame himself.”  After a few days, when he was exhausted from his heavy fetters and the effort of (walking) the difficult paths, and had come to a stop in order to rest from the rigours, the Magians brought two pairs of thick, new fetters, took the old ones away, and left him bound with them hand and foot, so that he could no longer get up because of their weight.  He received these joyfully and confessed and praised God.

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Academic integrity 3 – the Rollston saga continues

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learn today from Paleojudaica that Christopher Rollston, who works for Emmanuel Christian Seminary but published an article attacking biblical values, is now under investigation by the college.  The story is at the Chronicle of Higher Education here:

In an undated letter to Rollston, forwarded to Inside Higher Ed by a person who does not work at Emmanuel, Sweeney writes that the professor’s teaching style and the effect he has on his students “have demonstrably exacerbated our current financial problems. That, along with your recent blog, puts you at odds with the purpose and goals of the school… If you feel that you are unwilling or unable to change any of this, and, frankly, I am not even sure it is possible for you to do so at this stage, I strongly suggest you increase your efforts at finding a position in a university where people are not studying for the ministry.”

That seems entirely proper to me. 

What I find much more shocking, however, is the level of intolerance expressed by many commentators towards the college.   They do not share the values of Emmanuel, so they demand that Emmanuel should abandon its own, in order to continue giving Dr Rollston employment.  They would, of course, be the first to protest if they were the victims of a similar demand.

At the simplest level, this is bigotry.  I myself probably do agree with Emmanuel.  But whether I did or did not, I would certainly endorse their right to expect their staff to uphold the principles of the institution that pays them.  If they do not, I would expect them to be fired.  As I remarked earlier, there is no special principle at work here: it is simply a matter of honesty.

When I read, as I have seen in several places, this bigotry justified by claiming that attacking biblical values is just the “consensus of modern scholarship”, I learn that those making that claim are not scholars, and care nothing for scholarship.    For of course scholarship, as such, can have no view on a purely religious or political claim. 

It is the hallmark of the bigot that he refuses to acknowledge that those with whom he disagrees have a right to disagree.  And I see this all over the hostile commentary on this issue.

It’s disturbing to see such narrow-minded intolerance.  If this is, as some have written, what biblical studies is all about, then it is no scholarship at all.  Such pseudo-scholarship should not be funded by the tax-payer.

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Academic integrity 2: Walter Bauer and the German Christian movement

Posted on by Roger Pearse

He was said to be a typical academic: desperate for admiration and inclined to intrigue. — Based on the Stasi file on Walter Grundmann[1]

Today I have been reading Susannah Heschel’s book The Aryan Jesus, from which I quoted previously.  The book is rather discursive than precise, but nevertheless it contains much interesting material.  It is, in the main, about the German Nazi-era Institute for the Study of Jewish Influence on German Religious Life[2], and in particular about Walter Grundmann, its director, who became a Stasi agent in post-war East Germany.

The volume gives an overview, sometimes rather biased, of the rise of hostility to Jews and Jewishness during the 20th century, and how this was reflected in the attitudes expressed in German scholarship.  In particular it is very good on how the demands of the secular world were aped by the liberal protestant churchmen, and on the great power of the German Christian Movement in that period.  The story centres on Thuringia and Jena.

The book does not make enough allowances for the mixed motives that always prevail in every period, nor for the distorting effect of 20-20 hindsight on people who had no contemporary knowledge that this or that agenda was being pushed at secret meetings elsewhere.

I should add that the book contains far too few references for my comfort, and I frequently found myself asking, “How do I know this is so?  What is the evidence for this?”, which is never a good sign.  If I am going to express some statement as fact, I should like at least to know the data on which it is based.

Naturally I was interested to see what the book had to say about Walter Bauer, author of Orthodoxy and Heresy (1934), which I have been examining elsewhere, and which posits that real Christianity was no more authentic than Marcionism, the movement which was supposed in that period in Germany to deny the validity of the Jewish element in Christianity.

Bauer does indeed appear, but only once.  In 1927 he published an article Jesus der Galiläer[3] in which he identified Galilee as definitely non-Jewish.[4]  It is unfortunate that Heschel does not quote him directly, as one would naturally prefer to hear the man himself than someone’s representation of him.  But what was the social context of such a claim?

If you dislike Jews, and yet are a normal German in the 20’s, you have a problem.  Because you belong to the official state church, the Lutheran protestant, and indeed you pay a tax collected by the state for its upkeep.  This official church worships … a Jew.

So what do you do?  Well, you try to claim that he wasn’t a Jew.  And during this period, according to Heschel, this is precisely what German scholars were trying to do.

The argument is not as daft as it seems at first.  The bible tells of the deportations from Israel, and the alien settlers around Samaria, and there were more settlements in the area in the Persian period.  Persians are Iranians, and Iranians are good Aryans.  Being a Galilean, Jesus might not have had a drop of Jewish blood in him.

Into this process, the article by Bauer fits precisely.  And scholars such as Grundmann and many others proceeded to refer to a gentile, indeed an Aryan Galilee, for just this purpose, in order to claim that Jesus was not racially Jewish.[5]

Likewise we learn from Heschel that a purged bible, which discarded the Old Testament, and edited the New, was actually issued by the Institute.  It is very remniscent of Harnack’s demand that the church should discard the Old Testament.

However I am not certain whether Heschel is representing events correctly in this.  From what she says, the publication seems to have consisted rather of selected extracts, all very much in conformance with Nazi ideology.  It is at this stage that the limited referencing leaves the reader in the dark.

Bauer’s work consists of rubbishing the history of the early church, in order to substitute for it another, designed to undermine the authority of the church by suggesting that ancient heresies are just as authentic as representative of Christianity.  In the light of current events when he published it, this takes on a somewhat sinister light.  These two publications by Bauer are very much in keeping with the Nazi trend of the times.  It would be good to know more certainly what Bauer thought he was doing.

Of course there is a terrific irony here.  For Bauer’s book owes its popularity to a translation in the 60’s, and the use of its narrative by post-hippie gnostic-kissing secular theologians, of much the same stamp but a rather different political outlook from the Nazis, and with the aim of promoting a rather different ideology.

God has his jokes with those who set out to oppose him, it seems:

Blow the trumpets, crown the sages,
Bring the age by reason fed.
He that sitteth in the heavens,
He doth laugh, the prophet said.

In between the free love, was there time for a quick “Sieg Heil” or two, to honour their intellectual mentor?

But of course I may be mistaken.  Bauer’s friends must fall back on the saying of the old atheist about the gospel: that it all happened a long time ago, and we must hope that it wasn’t true.

Let’s finish with the cover image from the book.  There are other interesting photos inside!

Altar of the Antoniterkirche, Cologne, in 1935
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  1. [1]Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany, Princeton, 2008, p.258; the quote is Heschel’s reporting of a report signed by “Ludwig”, Grundmann’s Stasi file, May 11, 1960.↩
  2. [2]The title originally referred to “study and eradication”, but I understand from Heschel that the reference to “eradication” was dropped in order to give the body a more independent and scholarly appearance.↩
  3. [3]Reprinted in Bauer, Aufsätze unde Kleine Schriften, p.100 f.↩
  4. [4]Heschel, p.60, referencing p.103 of the reprint.↩
  5. [5]Heschel p.153: “Thanks to the work of Walter Bauer situating Jesus in Galilee, Grundmann could easily present Galilee as standing in opposition to Judea; thanks to Assyriologists such as Paul Haupt (and ignoring Albrecht Alt), he could claim that Galilee had been populated by Aryans who had been forcibly converted to Judaism by the Hasmoneans, but who were not racially Jewish…”.↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve been working some very long days this week, which has left no time for anything in the real world.  So here are a few notes about this and that.

On my bedside table here in the hotel is an interesting book, which I have had no time to read.  It’s published by the Cerf, and is entitled, Christianismes orientaux.  The unpromising title hides a very important book.  It’s essentially a patrology of the oriental Christians; Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, etc.  There’s an excellent bibliography after each section.  The blurb on the website reads:

Filling a gap in French literature, this work was conceived by its editors as an introductory guide to the languages and literatures of the Christian Orient.  Its six parts, consecrated to Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Georgian and Syriac, are intended to help beginners to orient themselves by means of a bibliography on the subject.  An overall introduction allows the reader to understand the essential unity of a religious thought which expressed itself in different languages, periods and places.

The only portion that I have even looked at so far is that on Georgian, written by Bernard Outtier.  It’s very excellent, I can see at once.  Sebastian Brock has said that he thinks that an English translation of this section would be a good thing, and I can see why.  I wonder if one could induce Dr Outtier to do the sort of thing that Sebastian Brock has done for Syriac; to produce a Brief introduction to Georgian literature in PDF form for circulation online, and perhaps an English tome on the same subject. 

The other item on my table has, I confess, at the end of some hard days of concentration, taken precedence over reading a volume in French.  It’s Assassins, volume 6 in the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.  It’s a thriller, of course, but it is marvellous to see Revelation translated into such a format so believably! 

It is really important to read Christian books.  The mental environment in which we swim will determine our attitudes.  People wrote them for us.  Enjoy them!

Mark Vermes has been in contact to say that the Chrysostom sermon that he is translating is nearly done.  I had hoped to get him to do a selection of other Greek texts as well, but sadly he will be otherwise engaged shortly.  Pity!

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Academic integrity or the lack of it – a thought about the Rollston saga

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learn from Paleojudaica today that a US academic, a certain Christopher Rollston, is in trouble with his employer because of an article that he wrote on the leftist Huffington Post site, entitled The Marginalization of Women: A biblical value we don’t like to talk about.

The article makes clear that Prof. Rollston is a practising leftie.  Charmingly, he recites his faith in the current shibboleths of early 21st century liberal America almost in set terms:

Augusta National Golf Club finally accepts its first women members, and so a Leviathan of gender discrimination at long last makes a move in the right direction. Conversely, Todd Akin falsely states that a woman’s body has biological mechanisms to prevent pregnancy in cases of something he refers to as “legitimate rape.” One step forward, two steps back in our battle for women’s rights.

Emphasis mine.

Well, a man is entitled to hold political views, however daft or repellent they may be to sensible people.  In a free nation he is surely equally entitled to call for the expulsion of all blacks, all Jews, and all Mexicans from the USA, with the words “One step forward, two steps back in our battle for an Aryan America”.  Isn’t he?

Live and let live; the fact that he holds political views with which we disagree (or don’t) is no business of anyone else.  Isn’t it?

But what he really wants to talk about is the bible:

From Mesopotamia to Egypt, women in the ancient world were considered property — valuable property, but property nonetheless. And it’s true of the Bible’s view as well. Yes, there were biblical women who flourished in spite of the patriarchy, women like Ruth, Esther, Lydia and Priscilla. But women in the Bible were normally viewed as second class, if even that.

Emphasis again mine.  Well, this was true in biblical times, certainly.  All sorts of views are reflected in the scriptures.  The patriarchs engage in polygamy, for instance, but … the bible does not teach polygamy. And here we reach the problem with Dr Rollston’s article.

The hostility of the political left to the bible is well known.  What, then, does Dr Rollston have to say?  I’ve taken the first sentence of every paragraph:

The Decalogue is a case in point. … Because the Ten Commandments are so well known, it’s quite easy to miss the assumptions in them about gender. But the marginalization of women is clear.

Women are marginalized in the book of Proverbs as well.

The New Testament contains texts that marginalize women as well.

Of course, there are even more difficult texts, with men said to be willing to surrender women to horrendous violence.

Thankfully, some biblical authors who pushed back against the marginalization of women.

People today often wish to turn to sacred literature for timeless trues about social norms. … After all, to embrace the dominant biblical view of women would be to embrace the marginalization of women. And sacralizing patriarchy is just wrong. Gender equality may not have been the norm two or three millennia ago, but it is essential. So, the next time someone refers to “biblical values,” it’s worth mentioning to them that the Bible often marginalized women and that’s not something anyone should value.

He isn’t talking about attitudes reflected in the bible.  He’s talking about the bible.  He’s talking explicitly about biblical values.  He’s attacking them, and stating that biblical values are … “not something anyone should value”.  He is, in essence, accusing the bible of heresy, heresy against the One True Teaching, that of the political left in the early 21st century USA.

Doubtless he does not value biblical teaching.  And why should he?  An unbeliever is under no obligation to listen to the scriptures.  Let him genuflect humbly to a set of values made up by the babyboomers, if he so wishes, and is so uncritical in his politics.  Just because we may laugh at his credulity in political and theological matters — for of course we are much better informed, and our own political and religious views are above reproach — does not mean we should nail him head down to a lump of wood.  Live and let live.

All in all, so far, so tedious.

But I gather from Paleojudaica that his article has had consequences.  For, it seems, Dr Rollston holds a post at Emmanuel Christian Seminary.  His colleague, Paul M. Blowers, wrote a quick criticism of the article on Facebook, which was seen and roundly abused by a certain Tom Stark who wrote an article at great length in which he quotes the remarks of Dr Blowers here, and attacks him for objecting to them.  He also describes another article by a group of objectors as:

…a bloviating, self-important, contemptuous, slanderous, malignant, condescending, pretentious, cynically dishonest, and ironically oblivious piece of garbage.

The language of political hate is rather in evidence here, which again indicates that we are not dealing with any academic issue.

Even so, Mr Stark accepts:

Yes, as a faculty member at a faith-based educational institution, Dr. Rollston should not publish something in the public square that, say, contradicts anything he would teach in class or say to a Christian community. For instance, Dr. Rollston should not write a Huffington Post article in which he rejects Christianity or rejects the Bible.

And yet, as we have seen, Dr Rollston has done exactly that.  I fear that the problem is much simpler; Mr Stark shares the political and theological views espoused by Dr Rollston.

Various other bibliobloggers have written similarly. Tom Verenna wrote a response along the same lines.  Dr Blowers wrote an article here, rebutting the criticism, for which he too received the lynch-mob treatment.

The responses that I have seen all deploy the tired old “academic freedom” argument:  If you don’t allow our religious views to be expressed at your private college, if you don’t give us a platform, then you aren’t academics at all. I hope we all laughed to see this dreary old attempt at manipulation trotted out again.

The joke about this, of course, is that there is any amount of comment on the web on the policies of American universities, which state that several have developed a hideous political conformity, to the extent that expressing any non-left views at some of them risks harassment by the authorities!  Yet I do not hear similar complaints from the same people.

It’s all deeply tedious, all this special pleading.  Anyone is allowed to hold any views they like, in a free country (although I believe quite a number of US Republican bloggers believe that, if you hold views of the political right, this does not apply to you).  But no-one is entitled to demand, as of right, that other people pay for him to advance those views.

There is no special moral principle here.  If I join a university founded by atheists, I can hardly take their money and use it to attack atheism.  To do so would be dishonest.    If I wish to abuse them, I must stop taking their money.  Likewise, if I take money from scientology (which God forbid), I cannot honestly write an article in a major publication holding up L. Ron Hubbard to ridicule.  To do so is dishonest.  If I gain employment from the National Union of Perverts and Paedophiles (will become a privileged minority in California by around 2020, if history is any judge), I cannot take their money and write against them in the national press.

This elementary moral point has always been ignored by those who call themselves liberals, since these can rarely find anyone willing to voluntarily fund them.  Instead they assert a right to loot the funds of others.

In a state university a diversity of views should certainly be permitted, which reflects the fact that the taxpayers who pay for the staff are entitled to expect that academics who share their political or religious views are not prevented from holding a post there.   Whether this is indeed the case in a liberal theological college, or a liberal controlled university in the modern US, we need not enquire curiously.  But this is not because the university is “neutral”; nor does it imply that Catholic universities are not universities, or any of the other hysterical claims being advanced.  It is simply because there is no agreed basis for belief.

Tom Stark has written, I gather, that Christopher Rollston may now be under investigation at his employers.  Considering the nature of the article that Dr Rollston has published, I would hope that this is so.  For that article makes pretty clear that, to him (at least as edited by the Huffington Post), the bible is not the final authority of faith and morals.  That exalted role is reserved for the edicts of those who control the media agenda in the time and place in which he happens to live.  And a person holding those views can hardly continue to take the money of those who believe differently.  But of course Dr Rollston may not hold the views that the article pushes at every person who can read; for we must never forget the power of the editor of a site.

There is indeed a question of academic integrity here, and of integrity among “bibliobloggers”.  There is nothing very fine about campaigning for other people to endorse your views at their own expense.  On the contrary, it is a selfish, greedy, intolerant game.  I’ve read quite enough paragraphs asserting that the article states “uncontroversial views” — yes, of course, any views you agree with are “uncontroversial”, if you are self-centred enough.

I would ask all those who have written “in support” of Dr Rollston — really of the sentiments of the article in the Huffington Post, for I know nothing against the man himself — to ask themselves if they would feel the same if he had written in support of an Aryan America.  If they would not, then I suggest they withdraw their comments and search their souls.

For the measure we give is the measure we will undoubtedly get.  It was the legislation of the liberal Weimar Republic that made the Nazi state possible.  Those who establish the principle that academics who conform to societal values, and reject the values of their employers, may not be expelled for so doing, may not enjoy it, when those societal values change.  And if history teaches us anything, it teaches us that societal values change, and often violently.

For the right to create a private university, where the evil of the times does not seep in, where the commissar may not meddle, is of inestimable value in an oppressive state.  In communist Poland it was the Catholics who kept things alive.  To continue to exist, such universities must expel those who would wreck their purpose, or cease to exist.  There is, after all, nothing very praiseworthy about the man who, supported by every engine of the state, demands that a minority “tolerate” him.  On the contrary, we should treasure these islands of rebellion and different thinking against the certainties of “society”.

Live and let live.

UPDATE: Within 12 hours of my writing the above, mentioning the lack of openness to different views alleged against some US universities, comes the news that “Gaullaudet University has put Dr. Angela McCaskill, its chief diversity officer, on paid leave because she signed a petition to put gay marriage before the voters of Maryland…”.  That is, she signed a petition which suggested that this particular policy should be voted on rather than just enacted.  Apparently that is grounds for disciplinary action.  I don’t believe this (deaf, black) woman is an academic; but it shows how little respect for dissent there is in US universities.

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Ephrem Syrus, Hymn 22 against heresies now online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Adam McCollum has kindly translated this lengthy hymn by Ephraim the Syrian into English for us.  The translation is public domain; do whatever you like with it, personal, educational or commercial.

These files can also be found at Archive.org here.

I will produce an HTML version when I can.

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We should blog in the Holy Spirit, and we should read blogs filled with the Holy Spirit

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Echurch Blog asks what biblical principles should guide bloggers, referencing a tremendous (if long) article by Bryan Chappell over at Gospel Coalition.  It’s full of good things:

The reason some of today’s advocacy journalism and web commentary are so dangerous to Christians is not because we are blind to their biases. Rather, the danger lies in our tendency to think that, since we agree with the viewpoints of certain commentators, therefore their digs at, and disrespect of, opponents are acceptable among us.

Blocs of Christians grow to appreciate certain commentators because they seem willing to say what we would like to say but our biblical instincts have made us hesitant to express. At first, we chortle at the sarcasm and scorn with guilty pleasure that our enemies have been made to squirm. But, over time, we no longer feel guilty, and then the real damage is done. Christ’s testimony erodes when his people grow so accustomed to verbal disdain that we begin to believe such speech is permissible for us. When the church fills with people holding so little regard for her spoken witness, then her redemptive purposes are far removed from her daily priorities.

We must determine whether our web tastes have been cultivated by the world or by its Creator. Returning evil for evil is not a Christian option. When the speech habits of the world become the unexamined practices of the redeemed, then it is time for correction and repentance. We correct by letting those in our own camps know when their commentary has moved beyond the bounds of biblical ethics and Christian love. We repent by, first, confessing that we are as wrong to receive gossip and slander as to spread it, and, second, by refusing to consume or visit the publications and sites that claim to be Christian and do not honor Christ’s commands.

Well said.  It’s easy to let things into our heads.  It’s far harder to get them out.  And what comes in will shape our attitudes.

I discovered an example in myself only today.  I’m not politically correct.  I loathe and despise the brainwashing that I have endured for the last 15 years.  It’s evil, stupid and perverse, and those setting the climate of what can be said, and what cannot, are people whose guiding principle is “if it feels good to me, then do it.”

Now I am the proud owner of the Official Irish Joke Book, in four volumes.  I haven’t read any for years.  But today I pulled down book 3 — “book 2 to follow”, as the cover says — on my journey to the bathroom.  While engaged in brushing my teeth, I proceeded to dip into it.  And … I found myself flinching at the jokes.  What was entirely proper light humour, published in 1985, is now something that cannot be said or thought.  But that isn’t my point.  Despite my thorough opposition to such brainwashing, I too have been conditioned.  My reflex flinching told me that.

I wasn’t “disgusted” or “horrified”, thank heavens.  The books are entirely innocent, after all.  But I suddenly saw how effective the suppression of such material, and the endless repetition of “you can’t say that”, must have been.  I suspect my reflex was simply that I have become used to the idea that such material will produce shrieking abuse.  And so even I have been influenced, against my will.

The environment in which we immerse ourselves will shape who we are.  For this reason, we must choose what that environment is.

Some Christians ration the amount of non-Christian culture they permit themselves, for just this reason.  But there are risks in so doing, not least because in our culture most modern Christian material is derivative or second-rate.  Since Christians are a despised minority — let’s call it what it is — this is natural.

But I have derived considerable benefits to my imagination this year, simply from disposing of my DVD player and reading a lot of Christian novels.  I really have.  It has helped shape my attitudes to God, to my life, and to the world.

I can feel it happening.  I’m working through the Left Behind series at the moment.  I have no view on the theology espoused by its authors, but it has been a blessing.  I have read various legal thrillers — a genre with which I am otherwise unacquainted — purely for the Christian worldview.  And I have benefitted.  It has lightened my imagination.

With every blogger, what comes out is what is inside.  In my case, as you will appreciate, there is rather a lot of ancient history and patristics inside!  That is not wrong.  But I also need to work on the question of which blogs I read.  I only have one Christian blog that I regularly read, and so I need others.  I do not mean “blogs written by Christians” but rather “Christian blogs”, written in obedience to the biblical principles mentioned above.

And so do we all.

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Chrysostom’s Easter Sermon — an online mystery

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At the Trevin Wax blog today I read the following, Hell was in turmoil:

Let no one lament persistent failings, for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the death of our Saviour has set us free.

The Lord has destroyed death by enduring it.
The Lord vanquished hell when he descended into it.
The Lord put hell in turmoil even as it tasted of his flesh.

Hell was in turmoil having been eclipsed.
Hell was in turmoil having been mocked.
Hell was in turmoil having been destroyed.
Hell was in turmoil having been abolished.
Hell was in turmoil having been made captive.

Hell grasped a corpse, and met God.
Hell seized earth, and encountered Heaven.
Hell took what it saw, and was overcome by what it could not see.

O Death, where is your sting?
O Hell, where is your victory?
Christ is risen, and you are cast down!
Christ is risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead.

This was attributed to Chrysostom, “An Easter sermon”, as translated by Andre Lavergne at Worship.ca.  The full version is here, and references a translation by  Frank Dobbs.

I think most of us are somewhat wary of unreferenced material of this nature, splendid and true though the statements are.  A PG reference would be so much nicer!

I find in Quasten (III, p.455) a reference to two Easter sermons, PG 50, cols.433-442, Contra ebriosos et de resurrectione, and PG 52, 765-772, described as “of doubtful origin”.

But surely Chrysostom must have preached more than 2 sermons at Easter?  In the CPG, vol. 2, p.573, I find a number of entries:

  • 4605, Sermo catecheticus in pascha, PG 59, 721-724.
  • 4606, In sanctum pascha sermo 1, PG 59, 723-726; followed by 6 more sermons of the same kind, all published by P. Nautin in Sources Chretiennes 36, SC27 and SC48.

Hmm.  Let’s look these up.  And we find … yes, the first item is the source.

It’s very short fragment of only a couple of pages, plainly mutilated.  Both the Lavergne and Dobbs translations translate the whole of Migne’s text.  It is placed by Migne, the PG editor, among the spuria, and the other sermons likewise.

A PDF of the Greek text, probably from the TLG, can be found here.  A manuscript of the text is online, BL Add. 14066, on f.4.

Let’s see what Nautin has to say about these items.

In SC 36, he discusses sermones 1-3 (CPG 4606-8).  All this material is transmitted under the name of Chrysostom.  But both Henry Savile and Bernard Montfaucon rejected this authorship.[1]  And Nautin states that the 7 homilies are not by the same author.  Homily 6 is attributed to a pseudo-Hippolytus; but there are several authors in the collection.  He does feel that the works must date from the late 4th – early 5th century.  Unfortunately he does not discuss our text.

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  1. [1]SC36, p.26.↩