Week 12 - New Old Perspectives

The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being: Evolution and the Making of Us - Alice Roberts

The Gnostic Gospels - Elaine Pagels

Adam, Eve, and the Serpent - Pagels

Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas - Pagels

   
   I have no idea what to write! These were all good books. Roberts and Pagels are good at including little personal touches, little human vulnerabilities here and there. By the way Roberts' illustrations are amazing! What a talented person.
   I had a lot of trouble focusing through The Gnostic Gospels, but that had more to do with me being preoccupied. Wouldn't it be cool to write a fairy tale or coming of age story by stringing together Jesus parables, interpreted as "tests," like the works of Hercules?
   Also, while reading Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, maybe my favorite of the three Pagel books, I kept wondering, how many discrete interpretations of Gen 2 are on record? Does anybody have a running list? I feel like after about two dozen they would start to become indistinguishable, even to the most discerning exegetes. Could I think of ten or twelve compelling readings and then fictionalize them?
   I definitely want to try writing stories, but I'm so bad at telling stories...I know that's a poor excuse. Mostly I'm just chicken.
   Back to the books - Pagels offers some encouragement to the spiritual seeker seeking with history: "For my own part, I came to realize that using historical means to explore the origins of Christianity most often does not solve religious questions but can offer new perspectives upon these questions." That's a nice pat on the back. Maybe this Jesus read-a-thon will provide some benefit to myself and others, if not in the form of discernment then in the form of possibility. Can I take from the storeroom treasures new and old?


Notes
The Incredible Unlikeliness of Being

• "But once you've come to terms with the undeniable fact that you yourself developed from a single cell during your embryonic development, perhaps it's easier to believe that you, that we as members of a species, have evolved from such humble beginnings."
• Hippocrates - male and female seed
• Aristotle - epigenesis, mixing of fluids, semen the active agent
• scala naturae vs arbor naturae
• "evo-devo" - embryology, genetics, evolution
• chordates - notochord, nerve tube, gill slits, tail
• development of a head linked to development of swimming
• agnathans - first vertebrates, "jawless" fish (lampreys and hagfish currently)
• sclera - white of the eye
• homeobox genes, "Hox genes," control activity of other genes, part of genetic makeup of every animal with a segmented body, including vertebrates
• "Everything that derives from on particular bump, or somite, is supplied by a single spinal nerve. Wherever those tissues end up, they "remember" their segmental origin in their nerve supply. Muscles might end up migrating a long way away from their original segments, but they still maintain their original nerve supply."
• referred pain - signals from different sensory nerves enter spinal cord at same level, sometimes it's as if wires get crossed
• reasons for initial loss of tail somewhat mysterious
• frugivores - most apes
• pelvis and shoulders for walking, running
• why did Neanderthals have huge chests
• lungs from swim bladder type thing 
• two heart chambers adapted for low pressure (air vs water) environment 
• brain consumes approx 20% of our energy, how to account for that vis a vis other apes (more body fat?)
• abductor muscles, keeps opposite hip up while walking, when damaged get "Tendelenburg gait"
• "sculpting a human body involves processes of cell death as well as growth and proliferation...it's a fundamental process in embryonic development in any animal with a complex body. In many cases, it's much simpler to generate too much tissue and trim back to what's required, rather than carefully program a complex pattern..."
• "the definitive muscles of the limbs...most end up containing tissue that originated from two or three (or more) of those original segments, or somites"
• myotome - the part of a somite that will become skeletal muscle, and the group of muscles that, in the adult, share a common ancestry in one embryonic myotome and are therefore innervated by a single spinal nerve (youtube myotome dance)
• epigentics, soft inheritance - gene expression, chemical modifications, shaped and passed down without necessarily changing DNA
• "the sprig of the tree of life that includes us and those ancient species that are our ancestors but not those of any other living ape, as far as we know, sprouted about 6 to 7 million years ago. All the twenty or so species represented on this sprig are hominins..."
• bicondylar angle (at the knee joint)
• grassland major expansion around 3 mill years ago
• bipedalism goes back "way before the first hominins arrived on the scene, back to the ancient Miocene apes who were the ancestors of orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas, as well as us
• running and throwing
• "these movements of the forearm - supination and pronation - are, to me, some of the most incredible things we can do with our bodies...We owe this ability to our tree-living primate relatives" (ability to grasp and hang at various angles)
• tool making and tool using shaping hand structure
• "If Chicxulub hadn't happened, it is vanishingly unlikely that humans would ever have evolved."

The Gnostic Gospels

• is "gnostic" a functional descriptor? very diverse group of texts labeled gnostic
• physical appearances of resurrected Jesus to a limited set of people in a limited time frame - also physical appearances more highly valued than visionary or "non-physical" visits by Jesus - used to establish and limit apostolic authority and succession (bishops)
• "all authority derives from certain apostles' experience of the resurrected Christ, an experience now closed forever"
• Irenaeus against Valentinians "what they have published...is totally unlike what has been handed down to us by the apostles"
• Secret Book of John - "if there were no other one [god], of whom would he be jealous?"
• "Irenaeus himself tells us that the creed which effectively screened out Marcionites [dualistic theology] proved useless against the Valentinians [said anthropomorphic doctrine and theology metaphorical, points to "ineffable" root of all being]
• Clement - submission to church authority implies true belief in God and witness of apostles
• Ignatius - "One God, one bishop"
• Irenaeus describes unauthorized meetings of "pnuematics" (followers of Marcus in this case?) - "when they met, all members first participated in drawing lots" to determine who served as priest, bishop, scripture reader, prophet for that particular meeting
• Irenaeus - "secret" tradition is satanic, coming from Simon Magus, as opposed to the openly proclaimed, universal tradition from Simon Peter
• Tertullian - "These heretical women - how audacious they are! They have no modesty; they are bold enough to teach, to engage in argument, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures, and it may be, even to baptize!"
• "martus," Gk - "witness"
• "the attitude toward martyrdom corresponds to the interpretation of Christ's suffering and death"
• who's in? profession of doctrine (orthodoxy) vs display of spiritual maturity (spiritual gifts or "true" understanding)?
• Ignatius - "it is not legitimate either to baptize or to hold an agape [eucharist] without the bishop..."
• Tertullian after he joined "Montanist" spiritual gifts revival movement - "The church congregates where the Lord plans it - a spiritual church for spiritual people - not the church of a number of bishiops!"
• eastern Valentinians - only those who received spiritual revelations were true church; western Valentinians - all who were baptized were part of church, but only some spiritually mature understand gnosis (many are called, but few are chosen); the chosen few obligated to spread gnosis to all believers
• three legged stool - doctrine, ritual, clerical hierarchy
• "what do the diverse texts discovered at Nag Hammadi have in common? No simple answer could cover all the different groups that the orthodox attack, or all the different texts in the Nag Hammadi collection. but I suggest that the trouble with gnosticism, from the orthodox viewpoint, was not only that gnostics often disagreed with the majority on such specific issues as those we have explored so far - the organization of authority, the participation of women, martyrdom: the orthodox recognized that those they called "gnostics" shared a fundamental religious perspective that remained antithetical to the claims of the institutional church." - knowledge of God as self-knowledge
• "Even the pagan critics noticed that Christians appealed to the destitute by alleviating two of their major anxieties: Christians provided food for the poor, and they buried the dead."

Adam, Eve, and the Serpent

• What therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder
• I am afraid that as the serpent deveived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ (2 Cor 11)
• For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor...1 Timothy
• Clement and Irenaeus - first sin was disobedience, but it took sexual form
• Clement - Adam, "desired the fruit of marriage before the proper time, and so fell into sin...they were impelled to do it more quickly than was proper because they were still young, and had been seduced by deceit"
• Justin - demons (giants) born when "sons of God" (angels) laid with "daughters of men" - demons the forces behind Roman gods and power
• gnostic interpreting a "shimmering surface of symbols"
• Adam and Eve as soul/psyche and spirit, or vice versa
• "Yet Justin, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement also agreed that Adam's transgression did not encroach upon our own individual freedom; even now, they said, every person is free to choose good or evil, just as Adam was."
• "For Clement of Alexandria, moral freedom is our glory (made in image of God)" autexousia - the power to constitute one's own being, free will
• "paradise of virginity," return to the garden with self-denial, chastity
• Augustine - Adam pursued a perverse freedom, autonomy
• Augustine - identifies self-government with rational control of sexual appetites (he says humans unable to do either)
• Augustine - "the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is personal control over one's own will"
• Augustine - semen transmits the curse, the original sin
• "Thus it is that all men want peace in their own society, and they all want it on their own terms."
• Augustine - death, deformity and suffering of infants, disease, sexuality, all the result of original sin
• Julian of Eclanum - the curse is experience of the one who sins, rather than the effects of Adam's sin
• "often people would rather feel guilty than helpless" - Augustine's theory meets a deep need
• Augustine - free will is ability "either to consent to wrongdoing, or to refrain from it"
• "For my own part, I came to realize that using historical means to explore the origins of Christianity most often does not solve religious questions but can offer new perspectives upon these questions."

Beyond Belief

• church - "a group joined by spiritual power into an extended family"
• paenitentia - change your mind
• Compare and contrast Gosp of John and Thomas
• John criticizing Gosp of Thomas tradition with his stories about Thomas?
• Luke and Matt - Jesus appears to the "eleven"
• Polycarp knew or met John, "disciple of the Lord," Irenaeus mentored by Polycarp, thats why Irenaeus so confident about apostolic tradition
• Polycarp never mentions or quotes Gosp of John, as far as record goes, neither does Ignatius or Justin; Gaius claims John heretical, written not by John but by John's enemy Cerinthus; but Tatian includes John in his harmony
• Irenaeus - "How can we tell the difference between the word of God and mere human words?"
• Justin vs Trypho - "virgin shall conceive" vs "young woman shall conceive"
• Origen - "John does not always tell the truth literally, he always tells the truth spiritually" ...'Origen even suggests the holy spirit inserted such contradictions into John's gospel in order to startle the reader into asking what they mean...
• Irenaeus, "evil exegesis"
• Gospel of Truth - see Jesus as "fruit on a tree" of knowledge
• second baptism - apolutrosis - "redemption, release"
• Valentinians love John
• Irenaeus - "four formed gospel" from four winds, four corners of world, John is first and foremost
• Irenaeus "canon of truth" - Jesus is God is the interpretive key for all gospels and for all OT
• depositum fidei
• Heracleon - distiguishes b/w two types of conversion - one on basis of miraculous healing or salvation (like ruler who believes after Jesus heals son), the other on basis of understanding/gnosis (like woman at the well)
• Eve, spiritual understanding, completes Adam
• epinoia - creative or inventive consciousness
• Secret Book of John - reads Genesis creator, unaware of Mother-Father blessed One, thinks he is only god, tries to keep knowledge to himself, Adam and Eve seek epinoia, he punishes them
• Constantine - supporting "lawful and most holy catholic religion"
• "heretics and schismatics shall not only be alien from these priviledges but also shall be bound and subjected to various compulsory public services"
• "forbade Jews to enter Jerusalem, except on the one day a year they were to mourn for having lost it; can't seek or accept converts; any attempting to prevent conversions to Christianity should be burned alive
• Nicaea 325
• "begotten, not made"
• Jesus "of one being with" God
• Nag Hammadi books may have been hidden away from Pachomius monastery after Athanasius wrote famous letter with books of New Testament, calling on church to burn non-canonical books
• Athanasius - use "dianoia," not "epinoia"
• "...the problem orthodoxy was invented to solve: How can we tell truth from lies?..."