Dark Goddess of Star Fire: A Meditation

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As the sun passes from water into fire and the moon swells full over the cold, hardening ground of the land, I ready myself for a night of ritual. In preparation for tonight's work, a few days earlier I spent some time in prayer and meditation, seeking the wise company of whatever guides might appear.

It began with a few tenuous notes turning and echoing out across the waters, the keening of the violin striving against its own tension and yearning. I was there, on the same familiar rocky cliff that curved in around a small bay, the dark waters of the ocean stretching out far beneath me. The murmuring wash of waves among the pebbles of the beach below, rocking in rhythm until the music faded again into silence.

Above me, the stars began to slip out into the night, one by one, as though disrobing from the dark veils of the night sky. One by one, they turned and shot a gasp of brilliance blazing out in a spiny halo of light around them, then pulled back again, glistening and humming with a silent energy. I lifted my head to ask them for their wisdom. It seemed as though one beckoned to me, glimmering more brightly than the rest. The vertigo of a wild night sky thrown open from horizon to horizon swept over me as my gravity seemed to shift — and then before me, solid as stone it seemed, a staircase spiraled upwards into the starscape. Step by step I climbed, my feet steady, my eyes on the scattered specks of light. Each step fell thick and heavy as though on stone draped over with the deep, plush fabric of night and darkness and stillness. As I reached the final stair, the star before me stepped close as a woman, dark and brilliant with features that seemed to shift as she turned, as though I gazed into her eyes from across countless light years. She smiled, and lifted her hand to caress my cheek and temple.

Then all at once, her other hand was at my throat, grasping my jaw firmly. With one quick motion she wrenched my face away, palm hard against my forehead, and I felt my spine snap as my body crumpled beneath her hard, cold fingers.

Love What Makes Us Wonder

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Folks, it's been a sniffly, mopey week here chez Ali, as I do my best to sweat and sleep my way to good health in time for my partner's and my up-coming week-long Big Fall Wedding Tour 2010, during which we will be doing things like: driving all over creation, camping on the beach, praising the gods of the threshold, investigating potential vendors and venues for our wedding, and introducing me to my future mother-in-law and other relatives. Not to mention, yesterday a hacker-virus-thing made its way into my gmail, triggering an automatic suspension of my account and officially deleting this blog for an hour or two, sending me into panicked sobs and hysterical blubbering (overly-invested much?) before it was eventually restored, but not before thoroughly nailing into my thick, mucus-filled skull that it's definitely time to begin the long process of transferring this blog to its own official domain name (more on this a bit later in the month). So let's just say I've had a lot on my mind this week.

But all you loyal readers deserve a post before I head off into the great southern roadscape. So I'm going to do my best, despite my head-cold-muddled mind, to give you one.

What I'd like to talk about is mystery.

The subject is prompted most immediately by a post by a fellow who goes by the name of Ravendark over at the blog Atheist Druid, which I stumbled upon a week or so ago thanks to Heather of Say the Trees Have Ears. Both of these writers are well worth keeping your eyes on. I've been reading Heather for a while, enjoying her emphasis on art, science and observation of the natural world which is modulated by a certain humility about her own experiences and uncertainties — something that is quite refreshing when so many other writers out there in the Pagan blogosphere are so full of snark and self-importance (not that I mind a little snark now and then, don't get me wrong). Ravendark's atheist blog, quite a new venture it looks like, has so far been intriguing; I've always enjoyed engaging atheists and agnostics in conversation (which may be why I've dated quite a few of them in my time — that is, when there wasn't a good Zen Buddhist around), and so far Ravendark's musing on deity and organized religion have proved quite interesting. (We'll forgive him for skipping over the niceties with me and instead emailing my partner, Jeff, to commend him for his excellent Druid Journal, which he found through this blog. This is one of the effects of the Druid archetype, I'm afraid: the older man with the beard must surely be the wiser and more experienced Druid than the young woman with the Celtic armband tattoo — even if she has been practicing almost twice as long. But no, I'm not jealous of my fiancé's clout, not at all. I mean, he's like, what?, fifty or something? and his blog has its own domain name, so clearly he must be more qualified, Ali continues her plotting...^[1])

Contemplations on Polytheism and Gods of the Land

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There was a lightness of being in my solitary walk to the library this morning, after yesterday's long-rumbling thunderstorms growling out of the dense haze and heat of the city.^[1] For the past two weeks I have been getting up early to hillwalk through the wooded park down the block, and even in the dawn hours everything hung heavy and damp, dark green, sticky, slick with heat, heat, heat. The pond was a low patch of thickening mud, the stream in the ravine a gully of trickling gutter-water between the tree roots. The mulberries from the neighbor's drooping tree were slowly fermenting on the sidewalk, and giving birth whenever someone walked by to a swarm of iridescent flies. This is not exactly unusual for July around here (certainly not as out-of-character as the hotter weather farther north). But the cloudless domed sky fading to muggy gray on the horizons unbroken for so many rainless days became a little disconcerting in a city centered on three rivers and so near a great lake, where the mountains rising to the east back up the westerly winds carrying their rainstorms over the land. We get a lot of rain here in Pittsburgh, but for the past two weeks it seems we've had nothing but hot, thick, hard-to-breate damp — sliced through with burning arrows of sunlight.

So yesterday was a blessing. An early twilight by midafternoon when the storms rolled in, and it was finally cool enough to fall asleep a few hours before midnight for once. For the first time I felt refreshed when waking up this morning, as if I had slept well and without that constant, unidentifiable anxiety that the body seems to absorb and store up from the enforced stillness of long, hot summer days. And the morning is beautiful. During long weeks of constant heat, coolness becomes a kind of abstract in a sun-fogged brain. Jeff and I kept talking about our upcoming vacation in cool, ocean-hedged Acadia National Park, and my trip soon after to Ireland — the misty green lands that my skin and bones remember, like a gift from my ancestors, without ever having been there — but I don't think I could really believe in these things or imagine them with any kind of realism.

Ah, but this morning I can almost taste the very first hint of crisp, cool autumn, sneaking in just after the high, bright peak of the solstice! Walking down the streets of my neighborhood, I had flashbacks to that feeling I used to get during the first weeks of a new semester back in college, when everything was light and fresh and free, with new classes (and, glory be!, new books to devour!) and new faces roaming campus, and a new year ahead. And in all of this, that special kind of solitude, the aloneness of stepping out and away from home, cut loose from routine or rather in the early stages of a new one when it still feels wide and spacious and full of possibility. It was as if heat had become my home, and I thought it would go on being home forever. It is hard to describe, but I could taste it like gentle sunlight — after two weeks I'd almost forgotten that sunlight could feel gentle and smooth, not always burning and oppressive — and light wisps of clouds that go skipping now from horizon to horizon in a cool lake of blue sky, awash in relief. And I am so thankful that my gods, if I have any, are changeable, full of movement and utterly beyond me.

Lacuna: Death & Afterwards

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Last bit of the Lacuna series, probably, as I already have some ideas for decent, proper blog entries in the works. This is something I actually wrote last January, after seeing a crappy Dateline (or some such nonsense) Special on "The Idea of Heaven" (which, of course, failed to take a non-Christian, let alone complex, approach to the topic).

Who Goes to Heaven and Who Stays Home

The question of what happens after the death of the individual human body is not so much an issue of belief in an afterlife, per se, as it is a question of the very relationship of an individual living being to the Divine (or God). The concept of a kind of blissful heaven into which a soul is "released" from the dying body (if the soul, while incarnate, has behaved and believed properly) is contingent on the notion of a Divine presence separate from and beyond the material world. The question of heaven is not so easily answered by someone who sees God as both transcendent and immanent, wholly Other and wholly Present, especially if this person studies not only sacred texts, art and poetry, but biology, physics and politics. After all, the lessons one might learn from biology and physics, first of all, concern the conservation of energies, the interrelated nature of energy and matter, and the natural processes of evolution, consumption, production, reproduction, etc., all of which suggest a more complicated and intricate interweaving of life on the material plane. And, for one who sees God within material existence, it is hard to avoid the question of why physical reality should be so complicated and beautifully cooperative, while spiritual reality is supposedly so dry, dualistic and simple-minded about reward and punishment. Add to this the study of politics (that is, the study of how human beings function as individuals within organized communities, and how those communities interact), which leads into further fields such as sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc. and one is faced with the obvious fact that dualistic us-versus-them theologies are almost invariably products of established and powerful regimes in which reward and punishment are promised to enforce a current status quo and balance of power, while many thinkers, visionaries, philosophers and progressives within such cultures implore their peers to abandon such small and restrictive notions of how we must relate to one another.

So how is a well-educated, intelligent human being--who attempts to be well-rounded and passionate about learning and growing in all areas of his or her life, including all his or her mental, emotional and spiritual sides--to answer the question of heaven? Life is of such complexity and grace, surely an after-life must be equally so. And even if we accept the traditional idea of heaven as the place to which one "returns" to union with the Divine, if the Divine is present within the material world, then this union must somehow take place within this very world in which we physically existent even while alive. Is it right to call this "reincarnation"? Not precisely, since this implies a single soul which evacuates the physical realm, only to return whole into a new body when it is conceived in the womb (or at some later point, depending on the particular theory). Even the Buddhist understanding of reincarnation is not so simple, as it is often explained with the metaphor of the flame which passes from wick to wick, so that the flame is of the same nature and source, but yet somehow a new and separate thing, not the same flame come loose of its original moorings and anchored again.

If we lean towards this view of reincarnation as a kind of recycling and reintegration of spiritual energies, what then becomes of the idea of individuality? For if our material bodies are not so blessed with a self-awareness as separate creatures, surely our mental, emotional and spiritual selves sense their uniqueness, rejoicing in it even as the prerequisite for a meaningful exchange and interrelation with other unique individuals and with the Divine as a whole.

[Clearly, this is so much a fragment as to end abruptly mid-paragraph, without giving writer (i.e. me) or reader (i.e. you) the chance to investigate more thoroughly the relationships among ideas of union, dissolution and individuality. This is partly because I got tired and distracted by the time I'd reach that point in my journalling, and partly because I didn't have any ideas where to go from there. Interestingly, the later mind-bit on the idea of "eddies" (which I posted previous to this entry) may give some insight into how to understand individuality of a non-material as well as a material nature. But I'll leave you (i.e. the reader) to ponder out those connections...]

What We Know & How We Know It - Part III

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Texts, Truths and Traditions:
A Study in Three Parts

In a recent post, blogger Robin Artisson, proposed this intriguing question:

"What if the entire New Testament was a construct, a forgery, a fake? What if Jesus never existed, and was instead a composite figure cobbled together from the myths of many other Gods that long pre-existed Christianity?"

The Part that Passion Plays

I've had some trouble with the transition into this third and final part of the "Texts, Truths and Traditions" series for a few reasons. First of all, as I mentioned in an earlier comment, these posts were originally written in direct response to Robin's opinions as he expressed them on his blog. His post, "Why a Return to Indo-European Polytheism is Needed," was itself rather disjointed--the first half addressed the possible forgery of Biblical texts and the questionable historicity of the person of Jesus, but the second half was largely dedicated to his own passionate views of "Truth" as reflected in an "Old Religion" centered on polytheism and the various deities of ancient Indo-European pantheons. Now, I find myself somewhat stalled, for in attempting to address this latter aspect of Robin's post, I find myself too quickly abandoning an honest discussion of the role history and literalism play in Biblical interpretation.

With that in mind, I think the best course would be to first take a look back at some of the ideas I've discussed so far and to put them into a broader context, focusing on the question, "What role do sacred texts play in a spiritual tradition?"

So, where have we come? In Part I of this series, we took a look at the relevancy of the historic figure of Jesus within the Christian tradition. I put forward the possibility that it is the idea of Jesus Christ, and not the literal, historical fact of his existence, which functions most prominently within Christianity and its varied and sprawling system(s) of belief. The idea of Jesus may include a faith in his historical presence in a particular time and place--in fact, it may be central to the theology of the Divine-manifest-in-man from a Christian perspective--but this is still a matter of faith, not of fact. The relationship that a Christian develops with Jesus as deity does not grow primarily out of archeological or historical research, but out of an engagement with Biblical texts and a personal participation in activities such as prayer and communion, which are understood for the most part to be interactions with God.

In Part II, we explored how the Biblical texts, as one of the source springs of Christianity, can be viewed historically as texts written by human beings that evolved in focus and interpretation over time to address the changing needs of various communities. Historical research continues to give insight into and evidence for various theological interpretations, but the theologies themselves continue to function in the realm of faith for the individual Christian. For instance, in her book Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, Sandra M. Schneiders looks at the historical and literary evidence to suggest that the Gospel of "John" was, in fact, written by a woman; however, a feminist theology of inclusion and respect does not hinge on this historical possibility, and if the authorship of the gospel were to be confirmed, it would likely have little effect on those who already adhere strictly to an anti-feminist belief system. Schneiders does not take on this possibility in order to convert all Christians to a pro-feminist interpretation, but to consider what new ideas, associations and possible interpretations grow out of such an interpretive perspective, as a way of both challenging and expanding upon the potentials for Christian tradition to support the need of a modern community concerned with gender-equality. Given this strange relationship between "sacred texts" and their historical context, it becomes increasingly important to look at how sacred texts in general function within religious or spiritual systems.

This is, perhaps, too large a subject to cover at the moment, especially if I intend to move on to address Robin's comments more directly. For now, I think it is important simply to recognize that texts can function in many different ways, and that the relationship between text and reader (not to mention writer, text and reader) is complex and multifaceted. Because the Neopagan community has, in general, so few texts that are considered "sacred" or "inspired" in the traditionally religious sense, it is easy to view all texts as functioning in a single and uniform manner, and thus to see any one aspect of that functioning as undermining all others. If a particular text fails to uphold itself on the level of historical accuracy, it can be easily abandoned for the latest book on the topic, which is sure to include all of the latest research. Starhawk's The Spiral Dance, a ground-breaking work and considered required reading twenty years ago, has been largely replaced in the Wicca 101 market by books which use similar poetic and psychological techniques, without resorting to unfounded beliefs in an historical matriarchal "Old Religion." Reading The Spiral Dance, while still sometimes considered essential reading for those interested in Wicca, is now less a spiritual task than a kind of historical work, looking back at the roots of Wicca and its subsequent development as a modern American religion.

On the other hand, there are plenty of examples of texts which hold spiritual value and are understood as "inspired," for the very reason that they do not claim to be historical. A good many Pagans seem greatly inspired by various science fiction and fantasy writers, whose works are free to delve into complex spiritual matters for the very reason that they do not talk about historical events of our own world that could be proved or disproved (my personal favorites are Tolkien, Le Guin and Pratchet). Likewise, many Pagans write and read a great deal of poetry, incorporating it directly into personal ritual or approaching creative writing as a magical act. The "sacred texts" of Neopaganism are, in some ways, as ahistorical as the spiritual beliefs that they address and express. While on one level this provides a cushion against the harsh materialist-literalist approach of historical and scientific "fact," I sometimes wonder if it also limits such sacred texts and their possible functions, pushing them outside the realm of real history and real time, so that they become just another kind of indulgent navel-gazing. Of course, Neopaganism as a self-identifying spiritual community is still so young, it may just be that we do not yet have the perspective to know which texts might come to play the role of both "inspired" and historical works...

In any case, Robin's final remarks in his original post provide an excellent example of the kind of passion that can grow within a person regardless of textual support. Indeed, some of the best know traits of Christian fundamentalists and creationists--their insistence on taking Biblical texts literally and on proving these texts to be "factually" true with often baseless speculations that make rather haphazard use of select bits of modern science and scholarship; their passion for the exclusive Truth of their own view and the uselessness of "foreign," "unnatural" or qualifying perspectives; their reliance on personal feelings of comfort, inspiration and fulfillment to justify their evangelism to others--are all echoed (if reversed) as Robin's critique of Christianity continues.

The heart of Robin's critique of (and disgust with) Christianity is not based on alternative authentic texts, scholarship or "factual" history at all; it stems, instead, from his passionate commitment to his own spiritual tradition. In trying to justify this passion in universal terms (rather than acknowledging it as personal, though still wholly authentic and fruitful), he resorts to some of the same techniques he has just finished criticizing. While Christians should abandon their beliefs because they are not based on "facts," he insists, "it is possible to believe and worship as our Ancestors did- modern Pagan religious reconstructions, from Germanic to Celtic, Greek, Roman, and Slavic, have been given much attention, carefully reconstructed in the spirit of the original faiths"--in short, the reconstruction of these faiths are, he claims, very close to being "factual" and therefore they can be trusted. (Of course, the Christian faith does not need to be "reconstructed" at all, since it is still a contemporary, living tradition, while the deities of reconstructed Indo-European faiths are even more obscure and difficult to study than the figure of Jesus--but this slips by unmentioned.)

Repeated exhortations to the "sanity" and "Truth" of the "Old Religion" of "Old Europe" (despite the widely-held view among many scholars and Neopagans alike that there was no unified Old Religion, per se) sound remarkably like Christian fundamentalists' claims that Christianity is the "original" and "True" religion of the human race (citing Genesis for support, of course), while the personal "comfort" Robin refers to repeatedly begins to sound eerily like the born-agains' stories of new-found security and certainty once they "found Jesus" and "accepted Him into their hearts." Even his story of ancient injustices and persecutions echo the Judeo-Christian mythologies of the struggling, repressed communities of believers that eventually gave rise to the traditions of martyrdom and sacrifice within Christianity. (And there is historical truth, if not exclusive Truth, to both of these identity-defining martyrdom mythologies.)

Like the Christians of fundamentalist and evangelical traditions, Robin's passion for polytheistic, Indo-European reconstructionist spirituality is not really based on what he can prove, but on what he feels passionately that he knows from personal experience and direct participation in the Divine. It is as moving as it is, at times, almost frightening. The same careful historical and sociological studies that have jeopardized the literal interpretation of sacred texts and forced modern Christians to confront the possibility that personal truth and "objective" truth may not be the same thing, have given rise equally to increased tolerance and open-minded personal faith, and to increased hysterical, xenophobic tirades against "insane" or "sick" alternative spiritual traditions. Modern Pagans are just as susceptible to this dual response to the intrusion of "facts" into the religious world as modern Christians are. It is a unique, but ubiquitous, aspect of a modern, globally-connected and culturally diverse world.

What We Know & How We Know It
Texts, Truths and Traditions:
A Study in Three Parts

Part I: Introduction & The Historical Person of Jesus
Part II: The Historical Nature of Biblical Texts
Part III: The Part that Passion Plays

What We Know & How We Know It - Part II

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Texts, Truths and Traditions:
A Study in Three Parts

In a recent post, blogger Robin Artisson, proposed this intriguing question:

"What if the entire New Testament was a construct, a forgery, a fake? What if Jesus never existed, and was instead a composite figure cobbled together from the myths of many other Gods that long pre-existed Christianity?"

Click here to read Part I: Introduction & The Historical Person of Jesus.

Part II: The Historical Nature of Biblical Texts

Which brings us to the second major issue that Robin's initial questions raised (and the one he focused most specifically on in his post). Even if we can set aside the question of the historical existence of Jesus, we find a difficulty around the Bible itself as it exists as a "sacred" text within the Christian religious tradition. Many Christians view the Bible as the "Word of God," and in this sense presumably treat it as a single, whole and static object, rather than as a collection of texts written by different people from different cultural perspectives and at different times. From here on in, I'm afraid the discussion will get a bit messier and won't be nearly as neatly and clearly laid out as the first half of my exploration, above. I hope you'll bear with me, nonetheless.

In his post, Robin spends some time rehashing various discoveries and theories regarding the historical development of the Bible as a collection of texts, in particular older and earlier versions of the four familiar Gospels. He quotes from an essay on "The Forged Origins of the New Testament," which seems to rely rather heavily on secondary sources written in the 1700s and 1800s, as well as statements from the Catholic Encyclopedia itself acknowledging the lacuna of definitive proof--in short, nothing new--while failing to cite any primary source evidence for the supposed forged documents themselves (here, I'll merely reminder readers of the familiar axiom: a lack of evidence is not evidence of lack). He also focuses almost exclusively on the relative age and authenticity of the gospels, without discussing the historical placement and analysis of the letters of Paul (which most scholars agree are the earliest records of Jesus, dating to as early as c. 10 C.E.), nor the tradition of Christian apologetics which was alive and kicking as early as c. 100-165 C.E.

Although it is true that our information about the historical person of Jesus comes almost exclusively from the collection of texts referred to as "gospels" (those texts which were written essentially for this intended purpose, to provide "the story of Christ's life and teachings;" the word "gospel" is a term applied generally to any such texts which propose to undertake this task, including the gnostic and apocryphal gospels), we have several authentic texts dating back to the first and second centuries that address the already developing Christian religious community and its beliefs, practices and traditions. (Here is an excellent resource for electronically published scholarly works on Biblical texts.) Since (a) we have already set aside the relative relevancy of the question of the historical person of Jesus, and (b) it seems clear that within these other available texts the role of Jesus Christ as a theological idea had already become central to the Christian self- and community-identity, and so it is unlikely that it was merely "invented" in the fourth century and inserted retroactively into the tradition, we can move on to the primary (and quite legitimate) concern: the complexities and contradictions found among these texts.

As Robin rightly points out, some of the earliest gospels (and even the codified versions of the four included officially in the New Testament) tell conflicting and often confusing narratives of the events in the life of Jesus. Certain doctrines and theological concepts that are now considered cornerstones of the Christian tradition (or at least select denominations of it) go unmentioned or entirely unsupported in these earliest documents. As he also points out, again quite rightly, "This may come as no news to many scholars of the Bible (and, it seems, to many Church scholars)..."

In fact, this whole discussion of the development of Biblical literature was covered very early on in my freshman year of college, and my degree isn't even specializing in Christianity or its historical development--it's a general Comparative Religious Studies degree. Furthermore, I would consider most of the people who took that class with me to be "average Christians" and other average people, few of whom went on to specialize in Biblical scholarship, theological scholarship, or even philosophical or religious studies of any kind (some of them were just fulfilling a "general education" requirement). I think this acknowledgment of conflicting versions and missing doctrines is generally much more widely known than Robin gives credit for--indeed, the only people who seem to find the historical development of Biblical literature, and all the complexity and lack of uniformity it entails, to be an obstacle to faith are (a) Christian fundamentalists, and (b) those who fundamentally oppose Christianity.

(Robin may object that he has spoken to Christians who were offended and/or skeptical of this viewpoint, but I would guess this may be because his presentation of it often boarders on a conspiratorial and sometimes even insulting tone, as it does in his post. I might counter that I have spoken to plenty of Christians who were fully aware of the historically diverse origins of the Bible, but then we might compare anecdotal evidence for hours on end and, as your friendly neighborhood scientist will tell you, anecdotal evidence is generally a very weak foundation for any argument. So let's move on.)

Christianity developed gradually and organically over time, just as most other religious systems in the world have developed (and just as Neopaganism is developing right now in modern society). The kind of organized, deliberate forgery and falsification that Robin suggests was, if not impossible, at least incredibly implausible, considering the wide-spread, structured social institution to accomplish such a feat simply did not exist until a good two to three hundred years after the supposed historical events took place and some of the first Biblical texts regarding those events (and the apologetic arguments regarding the theology of these events) had already been written and begun to circulate. This doesn't mean, of course, that particular individuals or groups of individuals didn't develop and pass on as "true" their own versions or stories of these events that were based less on "fact" as we understand it today, and more on the immediate philosophical, spiritual or imaginative needs of their local communities.

We see this process taking place even today within Neopagan communities, as certain Wiccan, Druidic and other occult traditions create, elaborate on and pass on "origin myths" about their histories. Wicca and Druidry, for instance, both base a great deal of their self- and community-identities on two admirable forgers, Gerald Gardner and Iolo Morganwg, respecitvely. It is a unique, perhaps even quirky, aspect of modernity that most Wiccans and Druids seem quite content to acknowledge the certain amount of "invention" at the root of their spiritual traditions (this is a trend Hutton treats in a number of his books), accepting that although these stories or sources may not be historically "true," they yet retain spiritual and social value as ideas, "invented" or not.

Even still, there are those within Neopaganism who indulge in the all-too-familiar urge to justify the authenticity of their beliefs and practices by making false or specious claims to ancient roots, unbroken traditions and even miraculous tales of heroism or martyrdom. If intelligent and well-informed modern individuals--living in a culture steeped in scientific "fact" and the careful academic study of history--still resort to such story-telling, is it any surprise that people two thousand years ago, in a culture utterly unfamiliar with the peculiarly modern notion of an objective and unbiased "history of what actually happened", would do the same? It takes no conspiracy theory of corrupt and manipulative religious or political leaders to explain such behavior. It is the result of ordinary people attempting to grapple with conflicting reports of difficult or painful events while seeking to understand how those events are philosophically, politically, spiritually or personally relevant. Knowledgeable, modern Christian believers are often fully aware of that different cultural and socio-political environments will lead to diverse and sometimes conflicting perspectives on a single event, and so they can accept and work with conflicting accounts within a single "sacred text" in this light.

Robin may be right in saying that, were the Bible to be proven factually "wrong," many Christians would take little notice and remain unshaken in their faith. In my opinion, however, this is not a reflection of a general stubborn ignorance on the part of Christians, but because very few Christians actually believe the Bible to be historically factual in the first place (Christian fundamentalists being the exception, as well as the minority). Theological concepts about the "Son of God," (and the phrase "son of man," which does appear in Mark), the "Word of God," the Resurrection and even the Trinity are recognized as exactly that: ahistorical, theological doctrines. Indeed, most Christians would most likely argue that such doctrines grew gradually out of a continuing, communal interaction with the Bible as a living, revelatory sacred text (its historical nature notwithstanding). In other words, new "revelations" of spiritual and theological meaning continue to be possible because the text is a dynamic, self-revelatory witness to the Divine; the "seeds" may be present in the original gospels and letters of the New Testament, even if all of their implications were not fully laid out and explored from the very beginning or from every perspective or viewpoint included. The Catholic doctrine of the immaculate conception, the doctrine of the eucharist, the various mystical and feminist implications of the Gospel of John and its ties to Neoplatonic philosophy, even modern "liberation theology" currently popular in Latin America--all of these can believably exist in potentia within the "inspired" (NB not "factual") recordings of historical events concerning the person of Jesus.

Although few Christians have the scholarly background to articulate it this precisely, I believe most Christians have an intuitive grasp on this non-literal and partly-ahistorical approach to the Bible, and are able to explain themselves if given the chance. Once again, I am excepting fundamentalist/creationist Christians from this statement, though they are sometimes an unfortunately loud and vehement minority. In the end, however, it seems that on the whole, the Christian community is both flexible and reasonable enough to continue to incorporate sacred Biblical texts as a functioning part of its religious system, regardless of continuing archeological and sociological/anthropological discoveries regarding their origins and historical context.

What We Know & How We Know It
Texts, Truths and Traditions:
A Study in Three Parts

Part I: Introduction & The Historical Person of Jesus
Part II: The Historical Nature of Biblical Texts
Part III: The Part that Passion Plays

What We Know & How We Know It - Part I

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Texts, Truths and Traditions:
A Study in Three Parts

Note: The following three posts are written in response to Robin Artisson's "Why a Return to Indo-European Polytheism is Needed." At one point, he writes, "I would personally like to see Christian apologists explain to me, and the rest of the world, why all mentions of the resurrection, as well as many other claims to the divinity of Jesus, and miracle stories, are not in these earliest manuscripts of the Gospels." And though I in no way consider myself a Christian apologist, I don't mind rising to the challenge.

Further Note: Just to put these posts, which will be rather verbose and "heady" (fair warning), into perspective, I just thought I'd point out that I sat at the computer writing for so long that I now have a cramp in my right forearm. On the other hand, this afternoon while sitting in mediation out on my bedroom balcony, I think I may have seen my first "faery." So there's that, too.

In a recent post, blogger Robin Artisson, proposed this intriguing question:

"What if the entire New Testament was a construct, a forgery, a fake? What if Jesus never existed, and was instead a composite figure cobbled together from the myths of many other Gods that long pre-existed Christianity?"

Now, as "a Christian on the Druid Path" (one day I will elaborate on exactly what this phrase means to me) and as a comparative religious scholar with more than a passing interest in the theological, ritual and spiritual uses of sacred texts in various religious traditions, I figured I'd take on the various issues that such a hypothetical question raises. (Plus, Erik ecently challenged me to consider more seriously my relationship with Jesus as a deity, and so I might as well address some of the more theological/intellectual issues that the figure of Jesus raises first, before moving on.) For me, these two questions incorporate (and perhaps confuse) two very different objections to the "truth" of Biblical texts within the Christian tradition: (a) what if Jesus was not an historical person (i.e. a person who actually existed in the time and place the Bible says he did); and (b) what if Biblical texts are inaccurate or intentionally misleading regarding the actions, words and ontological nature that it attributes to him. In the rest of this post, I'll tackle each of these issues separately (the one being much easier, in my opinion, to deal with quickly and cleanly than the other).

The Historical Person of Jesus

In general, I've found it very hard to collect a solid amount of thorough, serious and scholarly work on this particular subject. There are, of course, a few of those books out there citing evidence to prove or disprove the existence of an historical person, Jesus of Nazareth, son of Mary and Joseph, who was executed by the Roman state for perceived political rebellion. Every once in a while, I'll bug Nathan, a good friend of mine and my former faculty advisor when I was attending college, to make some recommendations about respectable or helpful books on the matter; inevitably, he replies that there just aren't very many because, quite honestly, it's not a topic that is considered to have much relevance in the study of Christianity as a religion. There are a few reasons for this.

• First, it is notoriously difficult to prove the existence of particular historical figures, especially if their cultural or social importance developed posthumously and within a minority community that was actively repressed or otherwise censored by the larger contemporary culture. Furthermore, it is simply impossible to prove that such a person did not exist; strictly speaking, it is impossible to prove the theoretical nonexistence of anything, and the best we can do is make statements about the relative likelihood that something or someone did or did not exist. (In case you were wondering, this is a very handy point to bring up when discussing the existence of God with atheists, as it makes clear how the belief in the nonexistence of a god is still, in the end, a belief, and not proof. The closest we can come to such a proof is Douglas Adam's excellent proof-by-contradiction regarding the "babel fish".) That said, the analysis of Biblical texts suggests that it is very likely that there was a person by the name of "Jesus" who lived in the time and place that the various texts claim and did at least some of the things they record.


• Secondly, the historical reality of this one particular person is not crucial to the understanding of the role such a person (and that person's death) played or would have played within the early social or cultural development of Christianity. This may sound a bit shocking, until we consider that, at this point in history, social and political tensions--both between Roman and Jewish culture, and within the Jewish religious community itself--gave rise to many such politico-religious "messianic" figures preaching various forms of alternative religious paths. When I was growing up, in fact, this was often presented to me as evidence that Jesus was the "real thing," since his death made such a huge impact as to be remembered two thousand years later, while other similar martyrs of the time faded into the obscurity of history. It could just as easily be argued that the idea of Jesus had such staying power because it developed as a compilation of and extrapolation from this common social figure. Either way, it is the idea of the person of Jesus which is most relevant to Christianity as a religious system, and clearly the idea did exist historically.


• Lastly, it is not the role of scholarly studies of religions to determine "which religion is true." The belief in an historical person of Jesus who is theologically identical to the deity-Person of Jesus Christ is approached as an aspect of the Christian faith or a part of Christian mythology. Scholars generally consider proving the historical existence of Jesus about as relevant to the study of Christianity as proving the historical existence of Krishna would be to the study of Hinduism, the Amitaba Buddha to Mahayana Buddhism, or Zeus and Athena to classical ancient Greek religion. Establishing definitively the existence of such people or beings does not necessarily give us much insight into their functions within the development, doctrines or practices of a given religious tradition. At best, disproving the likelihood of an historical person might raise the question, "Why did so many suckers believe it to begin with?" But then, this is more a matter for a sociologist or social psychologist to address (after all, there are plenty of examples even in modern society of everyday, reasonable people believing some pretty strange things--e.g. "fifty million Elvis fans can't be wrong").

With all that covered, it's understandable that, in some ways, the answer to this part of the original question, "What if Jesus never existed, and was instead a composite figure...?" would be a shrug and a so-what?. It wouldn't be the first time a spiritual or religious system grew up around a text or mythology that was largely "fantastical" and unlikely given what we now know through modern scholarly and scientific efforts. Indeed, most modern believers in any spiritual or religious tradition have come to accept this fundamental uncertainty and/or improbability as a "fact of life" about being a religious person. In the end, the historical existence of Jesus is as much a matter of faith for believers--through the perfectly normal and acceptable lack of definitive proof--as is the existence of any obscure historical figure. Heck, half the time I find it difficult to believe even Paris Hilton's real!

What We Know & How We Know It
Texts, Truths and Traditions:
A Study in Three Parts

Part I: Introduction & The Historical Person of Jesus
Part II: The Historical Nature of Biblical Texts
Part III: The Part that Passion Plays

On gods and their stories.

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I've been studying the ancient Celtic pantheon, trying to teach myself to believe. I would like to be able to more fully enter this world that connects my ancestral roots back to a belief in the beauty and glory of the gods and goddesses of old. I want them to come alive for me, the way faeries and tree nymphs have always seemed at least possible, if elusive. Still, as much as I might read, they're just stories to me. It's strange that the figure of Jesus Christ, just as implausible a god and perhaps even more so, seems so very real to me--the Trinity itself is very real to me, in an experiential way. Even the obscurer saints and archangels are real and when I journey the graypaths during meditation, I may meet them. And yet these other figures from Celtic myth remain elusive and unreal.

What's also weird is that I've started Tolkein's The Silmarillion, and even those fictional characters, the Valar, the "gods" of Middle-earth who are more akin to seraphim and powers and archangels--even they seem more real than the old stories of gods that people once actually worshipped. Perhaps it's because they have a shared cosmogony, a genesis story that is intricate and beautiful--that tells of the first harmonies of on-going creation. A world is created through them which I can imagine to be my world, and so they seem to be a believable, if forgotten, part of that world... of my world. And yet, they are fictitious. The children of one man's imagination and his obsession with linguistics. They aren't "real."

I almost wish they were. I can almost feel them, shimmering on the edges of possibility... if only just enough people took them seriously. After all, how else are gods made, if not by the momentum of belief? But then, are these truly gods, or merely collective fantasies? The organ of my belief functions in such a way that I can only bring myself to believe in that which existed "in the beginning"--Jesus as historical figure may be a wonderful teacher, but it is Christ as the Word, the first note in the song of creation, in whom I truly believe as part of the Trinity. And perhaps this is why I find it difficult to believe in the deities of the Celtic pantheon. They are not cosmogonic--they are, in some way, incidental, only players across the stage of myth. I may find inspiration and connection in the green hills, the ineffable mists and the rolling oceans of Celtic myth, but its gods are only casual visitors upon a sacred landscape. The Trinity of Godhead, Manifest Spirit and the Bridge between the two walked that landscape long before the Celtic gods and goddesses were named.

Still you never know. Perhaps in some distant future, Tolkein's manuscript, forgotten and faded, will be unearthed and mistaken for actual lore instead of a work of fiction. Someday there may be Neopagans learning how to believe in and relate to the Divine through Ulmo, Manwe and Aule, Varda and Yavanna, instead of through Brigid, Bile, the Dagda or Lugh.