Comments on life and opinions of andrew rilstone: One In a Taxi, One in a Car

Hear Hear!

2009-03-17T22:58:00.000Z

Hear Hear!

Since you are busy changing direction, I just want...

2009-03-17T17:35:00.000Z

Since you are busy changing direction, I just wanted to write that this post was my favourite of this year - witty and erudite. It is why I love reading your writing.

Regards

I think it depends, Christina. Some Christians act...

2009-02-04T20:51:00.000Z

I think it depends, Christina. Some Christians actually go the whole hog and say it's all a historical metaphor that they happen to believe, unless it's been validated by history/science.

I remember much the same going on about ten, twelv...

2009-01-08T23:43:00.000Z

I remember much the same going on about ten, twelve years back, when David Jenkins was still Archbishop of Durham.
My family were Christmasing in Newcastle and we went to see him preach. A good sermon, largely about the incompatibilities between the two gospel accounts and how This. Did. Not. Matter. because what counted was that Christ was God become Man and he would die for the redemption of our sins, something all four evangelists agreed about. A good sermon and very well delivered.

On the way back to Tyneside we turned the radio on and heard that the sermon's message was that 'The Nativity was irrelevant.'

I really enjoyed this discussion, and I always lov...

2009-01-07T19:10:00.000Z

I really enjoyed this discussion, and I always love it when thinking Christians realize what's basic to saving faith versus what is helpful afterward. I have to say that I'm both challenged and disturbed by the way you talk about scripture. I don't mean to be paranoid, but if the visit of the magi is just there to make a point but didn't actually happen, what other parts of scripture do that? How far down the hole are you willing to follow that rabbit? I personally have not found the boundary line yet. Where's yours?

Very interesting essay. My only issue is that you ...

2009-01-07T18:33:00.000Z

Very interesting essay. My only issue is that you conflate two separate questions: 1) What does the Bible actually say about the events of the Nativity? and 2) How historically factual is the Biblical record itself?

As far as correcting the press accounts goes, it appears that one only needs to rise to the level of the first question: the Archbishop appeared mostly to be disentangling what was in the Gospels from the traditional accretions that have been added to the story since then. Perhaps using the word "tradition" rather than "legend" would have caused less consternation.

Throwing the second question into the same mix, however, is problematic. It seems to me to be cheating to say, "I need Jesus to be actually born of a virgin and into humble and obscure circumstances for theological reasons; but the Magi and the shepherds can be relegated to divine hyperlinks, pointing back to passages that appear to be pointing forward to, well, things that didn't really happen but make a very nice story that illustrate some wonderful truths about Jesus." It is at least possible that not only were the stories written by Matthew and Luke contrived to point back to significant Old Testament texts, but that the events themselves were divinely arranged to do so. Lewis wrote somewhere about straining at the gnat of minor miracles while swallowing the camel of the Resurrection.

The events recorded in Matthew and Luke really aren't as incompatible as you suggest, especially considering that they may be separated in time by as much as two years. You have to make a single wandering star into a "divine fireworks display" in order to heighten the incongruity. (It need not have been the gigantic four-pointed long-tailed beacon featured on very expensive cards.) Certainly Matthew emphasizes the grandiose, although a bunch of foreign astrologers wandering into town and out again, and characteristically paranoid Herod sending out a few soldiers to dispatch what few small children there may have been in a nearby small town, may not have made the evening news in the context of The Events of the Day. Conversely, Luke emphasizes the humble aspects, but makes much more of a drama about it than Matthew; certainly the "heavenly host" appearing to the shepherds was much more a divine fireworks display than anything described by Matthew.

Of course the discussion of whether something is historically and factually true is different, and less profound, than the question of what it means. But it is a prior question. Something must have happened for it to mean anything at all.

But has the Archbish yet explained where 'Orientar...

2009-01-07T17:09:00.000Z

But has the Archbish yet explained where 'Orientar' is?

The most amusing thing about last year's storm in a teacup was the Daily Mail's editorial basically saying 'Yes we know that there weren't actually Three Kings but the Archbishop shouldn't have said this as it might upset people'. Normally 'not saying the truth as it might upset people' is described by the Daily Mail in a noun-phrase starting with P and ending with Olitical Correctness Gone Mad.

Andrew: Oh, OK, so I should have looked up the ori...

2009-01-07T10:13:00.000Z

Andrew: Oh, OK, so I should have looked up the original interview. My apologies for implicitly assuming that Mayo isn't a twit. Oops. :-)

A lot of the imagery we're used to about the mange...

2009-01-07T04:26:00.000Z

A lot of the imagery we're used to about the manger, etc., seems to have come from a vision of St. Brigid of Sweden, who seems to have taken careful notes and been considered an eye-witness by her contemporaries. This includes the ass and ox poking their heads in the window, the relative positions of four angels, and the laying of the naked baby on the floor (where his light outshines the lamp in Joseph's hand) for the better adoring of his mother.

All I want to say when I see such images is "Get that child some CLOTHING, dammit!"

2: I knew that; there are quotes around the first ...

2009-01-07T01:59:00.000Z

2: I knew that; there are quotes around the first three lines in Eliot's poem. There are also quotes around virtually the whole of the Wasteland. Sorry I left them out. (It's the Eliot poem that's popular at Carol services, although I have head readings of the original sermon.

1: The interviewer definitely thinks that the Gospels have been mistranslated: "Christopher Hitchens and many others make the point that isn't the translation for young woman rather than virgin? Does it have to be seen as virgin; might it be a mistranslation?" This seems to be the result of a game of Chinese Whispers; a clever person said "Matthew's story of the Virgin Birth is a pious fiction intended to retrofit the story of Jesus to Isaiah; and he was looking at a Greek text which had (arguably) been mistranslated from the Hebrew" and a less clever person heard "Virgin Birth...mistranslation".

There's certainly a widespread belief that Matthew and Luke said that Jesus mother was a "young woman", and Bad Constantine at the Bad Council of Nicea made a Bad Translation in which the word was changed to "virgin" and ordered that all other texts be burned, along with the surviving slices of Mary Magdalene's wedding cake.

Very good stuff indeed.

Quibble: If you're ...

2009-01-07T01:32:00.000Z

Very good stuff indeed.

Quibble: If you're happy with the idea that the gold and incense and star and manger might be in the nativity stories only because their authors wanted to remind their readers of the relevant bits of the Old Testament, then I think you ought to be more sympathetic to those who say "the story of the virgin birth is based on a mistranslation"; if a gospel author can introduce gold and incense to remind readers of Isaiah 60, why can't they introduce a virgin birth to remind readers of Isaiah 7? (Of course the gospel author would have to be working from the Septuagint, but that's not so very implausible.) So I think "not entirely implausible speculation" might be nearer the mark than "lie".

Quibble the second: Most of the Eliot passage you quoted is in fact from the imagination of Lancelot Andrewes, whom Eliot was (approximately) quoting. But Eliot does take the blame for the camels, which I guess is the point.

Oh, and Morgan is correct. Every fool may very we...

2009-01-06T19:33:00.000Z

Oh, and Morgan is correct. Every fool may very well know that it doesn't snow in the Middle East. That's because they're fools who know lots of things which just ain't so. On January 30, 2008, Jerusalem got 8 inches of snow.

I had three separate heated conversations with ...

2009-01-06T19:30:00.000Z
I had three separate heated conversations with relatives on the subject of the Nativity over the festive season, and the 'ongoing assault' on Christmas in general, one even descending into the relative regnal years of Augustus and the most likely Herod (this last was conducted during a lull in Midnight Service on Christmas Eve). As an atheist I never cease to be enthralled by the failure of dedicated Christians to read their bibles when arguing these points. In future I may point them to you for instruction.

Most likely Herod? It has to be Herod the Great, doesn't it? His three sons (all named Herod) ruled as tetrarchs, not as kings, and the next king, Herod Agrippa, took over after Jesus was already dead. And, no, I don't know why they were called tetrarchs when there were only three of them.

To be fair, most American fundamentalists do indeed know their Bibles and could go point-for-point with Mr. Rilstone. Rush Limbaugh, who has a lot of fundamentalist Christian followers, is very far from a fundamentalist himself, never having been born again, never talking about Jesus, occasionally genuflecting to God, and admitting (rarely) that he's personally not very religious. (He doesn't even go to church as he admitted to Geraldo Rivera in an interview after some hemming and hawing.) He is vaguely in favor of Christianity and is certainly not above tub-thumping on the subject (as here).

But it *does* snow in Bethlehem in winter sometime...

2009-01-06T19:25:00.000Z
But it *does* snow in Bethlehem in winter sometimes.

Therefore Cardinal Rowan Williams is at war on Christmas and Rush Limbaugh wins! (Am I doing it right?)

On behalf of America, I apologize for Rush Limbaug...

2009-01-06T18:39:00.000Z
On behalf of America, I apologize for Rush Limbaugh's mischarachterization of this issue. He has been sent to Guantanamo Bay.

A nice read for one of my least favourite days of ...

2009-01-06T18:26:00.000Z
A nice read for one of my least favourite days of the year, many thnaks. I had three separate heated conversations with relatives on the subject of the Nativity over the festive season, and the 'ongoing assault' on Christmas in general, one even descending into the relative regnal years of Augustus and the most likely Herod (this last was conducted during a lull in Midnight Service on Christmas Eve). As an atheist I never cease to be enthralled by the failure of dedicated Christians to read their bibles when arguing these points. In future I may point them to you for instruction.

Wow, that was really interesting. I heard a littl...

2009-01-06T17:45:00.000Z
Wow, that was really interesting. I heard a little of the fuss about Rowan Williams' supposed denial of the Nativity... I think it's far too popular to suppose that the clergy don't really believe in Jesus; I think perhaps papers view the clergy as the politicians of the church - they may run it but they apparently don't believe in it or truly care for the people in it. Generally Rowan Williams is thought of as so liberal that anything he says is immediately supposed to be dangerous heretical nonsense. It gets tiring after a while.

So as with every supposed scandal about what our esteemed Archdruid says, I didn't pay much attention, except to note that he was right. Oh, and Mary didn't travel to Bethlehem on a donkey either... For shame, the archbishop actually believes what the Bible says as opposed to vague handed-down retellings in popular culture. I'm pretty convinced that some of today's children would think that Santa and some reindeer popped in with some extra presents (why does no one bring baby clothes??).

I think you're really onto something about the origin of "kings" and "the ox and the ass", you've made the nativity far more interesting than I thought it was :)

Don't suppose you could be the next Archbishop of Canterbury? It'd annoy the Daily Express, at least!

Comments on life and opinions of andrew rilstone: One In a Taxi, One in a Car

Hear Hear!

Since you are busy changing direction, I just want...

I think it depends, Christina. Some Christians act...

I remember much the same going on about ten, twelv...

I really enjoyed this discussion, and I always lov...

Very interesting essay. My only issue is that you ...

But has the Archbish yet explained where 'Orientar...

Andrew: Oh, OK, so I should have looked up the ori...

A lot of the imagery we're used to about the mange...

2: I knew that; there are quotes around the first ...

Very good stuff indeed.Quibble: If you're ...

Oh, and Morgan is correct. Every fool may very we...

I had three separate heated conversations with ...

But it *does* snow in Bethlehem in winter sometime...

On behalf of America, I apologize for Rush Limbaug...

A nice read for one of my least favourite days of ...

Wow, that was really interesting. I heard a littl...

Very good stuff indeed.

Quibble: If you're ...

But it does snow in Bethlehem in winter sometime...