Stratovania

I guess the first thing I should mention is that we sort of have a new cat, and I say "sort of" because she's not living with us yet. Beth's mom got a kitten from her sister's farm, intending to give her to us, but we should kitten-proof our apartment before bringing her to Brooklyn. Anyway, I named her Nellie, and so far she mostly seems interested in running around and playing. She's very active, and hasn't yet shown much interest in just sitting with people. She doesn't seem afraid of anybody, though. I feel bad that she wants to play with the dogs, but they're not interested.


Beth and I both had our birthdays last week. On the day after hers, we had a pretty busy day, visiting the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, eating at a cafe, attending a lecture at Green-Wood Cemetery, and seeing a movie.

The lecture was about cremation, including its history and how it was done at that location. It's been standard in India for ages, but it took some time to catch elsewhere, including in the Americas. Even though the Pope has said it's okay, it's apparently still not popular in Catholic families. There was a time when there was a theological debate over whether bodily resurrection would be possible with ashes. Now it's probably just a matter of tradition. They also mentioned that it's not very energy efficient, and involves burning fossil fuels. I don't see any reason to preserve my body after I'm dead, but I guess that's more a decision for anyone still alive who might care than for me. I haven't yet made my post about the movie Thanksgiving, but I should have it up soon. I didn't do anything on my birthday except going out to eat at the Olive Garden; I feel we went out to do stuff so often in October that I was a little burned out, and didn't have any ideas anyway.

Presents I received included two Carl Barks collections, the newest Belle and Sebastian album, and the book Fight, Magic, Items by Aidan Moher, which is about Japanese role-playing video games from a Western perspective.

Beth also bought me the Switch remake of Super Mario RPG while we were at Target. I finished the original back in the early 2000s, and I remember it being frustrating in parts, but I'm sure it'll be fun to revisit when I get around to it. I kind of got stuck in I Am Setsuna, so I've put that aside for the time being. And I started Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, but haven't gotten very far as of yet. It's cute, but I've had a little trouble with the battle system. And I'm still playing Animal Crossing, and I did the Turkey Day thing on Thursday. I realized I hadn't planted any white pumpkins on my island, so that's been taken care of. I also got "K.K. Birthday," which I think is the last of the K.K. Slider songs in the game, but I don't think there's any reward for that.

Super Mario Wonder looks fascinating, but as much as I love Mario, I'm not great at platform games.

Beth's mom made Thanksgiving dinner for us, and we were originally going to go to Creamy Acres for the Christmas hayride on Friday, but she wasn't feeling well. We'll try to do it some other weekend. We did have lunch with my mom, sister, sister-in-law, and nephew today. I've done a little bit of Christmas shopping, but not that much.

This weekend, Beth and I visited two different Pennsylvania amusement parks, Knoebels north of Harrisburg, and Dorney Park near Allentown. Neither of us had been to the former before, and the last time I went to Dorney was around thirty years ago. Knoebels is a small, rather quaint family-owned park with a lot of older rides, which started in 1926. Their mascot is a chipmunk named Kosmo, and other cartoon animals could be seen around the place.

Admission to the park itself is free, and you can pay either a flat rate for unlimited rides all day (which is what we did) or buy individual ride tickets. One particular ride, a dark one called the Haunted Mansion, requires separate admission, and I'm not sure why. We did go on it, though. A few rides were closed, including the other dark ride, the wooden bobsled roller coaster, and a water ride called Sklooosh!, the latter of which I didn't particularly want to ride anyway, but the name is fun to say. It looks to have a Viking theme.

We did ride the newest steel coaster, Impulse, and two wooden ones.

Twister, from 1999, lived up to the name, and was rather rough. We weren't chillin' with that Twister. The Phoenix was built in 1947, and moved to Knoebels from Texas in 1985. I can't even imagine how you'd go about transporting a roller coaster, but it happens much more often than I would have thought. The Grand Carousel was the first one I remember riding that still had brass rings, although they were only accessible from the outer row, where the horses didn't move. We went on the Motor Boats without really knowing how they worked, and it turned out that you had to steer them yourself. I'm not sure if we got a bad one or I just couldn't figure it out, but it responded very slowly and I kept running into the sides. The Pioneer Train was for all ages, but the seats were small, so I felt like Ian Maxtone-Graham in his tiny car while riding it.

I suspect some people would be too tall for it, especially as it goes through some low tunnels. The Cosmotron is an indoor Music Express kind of ride with a laser show on the ceiling. The building it's in looks like a shack with a satellite dish on top. Is it supposed to be some UFO enthusiast's cabin in the woods?

The Scenic Skyway is a chairlift that runs up and down a nearby mountain. I'll admit it made me a little nervous, not because I thought there was a chance of a person falling off, but because I was afraid of dropping something and then never finding it. I have a fear of heights, but generally only when I can really process how far up I am, so it's not like tall roller coasters or airplanes bother me that way. We had dinner that night at an affiliated restaurant called the Nickle Plate, which unfortunately was not affiliated with the Tin Woodman, then drove on to Allentown. We tried to buy tickets to Dorney online, but apparently they sell out, and then you have to pay an extra twenty dollars per ticket at the park itself.

I can't remember exactly the first time I went to Dorney, but I know Hercules, at the time the tallest wooden roller coaster in the world, was new then, so it might have been 1989. That one lasted until 2003, when it was deemed too costly to maintain, so it was replaced with one called Hydra the Revenge. I appreciate the mythological reference there, as it was the Hydra coming back to get revenge on his killer. The traditional account of Hercules' death is that he put on a coat soaked in Hydra venom from his own arrows, so it's even somewhat accurate.

They had stuffed Hydras at the gift shop, but they only had one head.

I also went to Dorney on a class trip in junior high, and maybe one other time? In addition to Hercules, I remember a small, fast coaster called the Laser, and I understand it's now touring around Germany. I tended to think Dorney was somewhat less enjoyable than the other parks I visited as a kid, with fewer good rides and no real themes to anything. Beth was interested in it as she has an interest in classic rides, and among other things they still have a Whip from 1920 in operation.

By the way, the one at Knoebels was called the Whipper, so is there a Whippest anywhere? I believe I'd ridden the other wooden coaster from 1924 back in my youth, when they'd first named it Thunderhawk. It's still there, and we rode it.

Dorney was also where the scenes of Sonny Bono's segregated amusement park in Hairspray were filmed, so even then it must have been considered old-fashioned. They've added a lot more stuff since my last visit, but there are still a fair number of classic rides, or at least newer versions of classic rides. My tastes have changed since then anyway, partially as I've reached the age where some of the rides make me queasy or hurt my head, which pretty much never happened in my childhood. I'll still ride pretty much anything, but the good rides are now not the thrilling ones so much as the ones that don't cause pain. I was worried that the park would be really crowded, since it was a Saturday and all, but it really wasn't. Beth figured most of the people were at Wildwater Kingdom, which makes sense as more people showed up once the water park closed. Dorney itself closed at 7 PM, their explanation being that they couldn't get enough people to work there, which often translates to their not paying very well. But anyway, we got to ride most of what we wanted to. Steel Force and Talon are pretty cool coasters, and the Demon Drop is basically the same as the now-defunct Stunt Man's Free Fall at Great Adventure.

There are two train rides, one of them, the Zephyr, reviewing some park history. There was another blast from the past after we left, because we ate at Perkins, and I haven't been to one of them in years either. Now I can't help associating them with Tiger Woods having an affair. I had pancakes and an omelette, and I brought home some apple pie for later. We got back home late last night, and I'm still pretty worn out.

Beth and I went to the Mercury Lounge last night to see Rasputina. I'd never been there before. There are a few bands I like that used to play there, but it's a small venue and they outgrew it before I saw them live. They Might Be Giants did several shows there around when they were putting together their 1996 album Factory Showroom. Anyway, the opener was Ryder Cooley, who's in a band called the Dust Bowl Fairies, but this time she just played solo. She had backing tracks, and played accordion and saw, the latter of which she held in her legs.

It seemed a little weird, but I guess I've never put that much thought into how saw players usually hold them. I believe the first time I saw a saw played as an instrument was at a show by some German musicians I saw with my junior high German class, and I don't remember at all how they supported it. Cooley showed up with a taxidermy goat head on her back, which she hung near herself later in the set. She also played in the main set, accompanying Melora Creager on saw, shakers, and tambourine. As with other Rasputina shows I've seen recently, but unlike ones back in the day, Melora was the only cellist. There was also a drummer, so it was a three-piece band this time.

They played a good mix of songs. Rasputina's setlists tend to vary quite a bit, maybe partially because I don't usually see them more than once on the same tour, but also because I don't think they have any big hits they feel obligated to play every time. Melora asked the entire audience to sit down on the floor, which we did, and it wasn't that comfortable, especially considering the size of the crowd. Everyone around me was really friendly about it, though. I guess that's the sort of oddity you just go along with. It was one of the few times where I was relieved to stand up, the others usually involving riding in a vehicle for a long period of time. Melora wasn't as straight-faced with her weird banter as she often is, and commented on how absurd some of her introductions were.


After the show, we went to Katz's Delicatessen for the first time, as it's right down the street. Houston Street is the one that divides the numbered streets of Manhattan from the area farther downtown where they all have individual names. I'm digressing here, but I'm a bit fascinated by patterns in street names and how they got that way. The grid of numbered streets was established by the Commissioners' Plan of 1811, and I'm not entirely sure why Houston was used as the boundary, although it looks like it might be because the area south of that already had an established street system, albeit a somewhat haphazard one. It also didn't include Greenwich Village, which wasn't part of New York City at the time. Anyway, at Katz's, I had chicken noodle soup and half a pastrami sandwich, while Beth had an open-faced brisket sandwich with fries and cole slaw. I don't care for cole slaw myself, but Beth said it was really good.

The food is expensive, but they give huge portions, so you basically get your money's worth. I'd heard about that, so it's one reason I went with just half a sandwich, aside from that being part of a special. The food was excellent, but be forewarned that you should either be really hungry or prepared to take something home. Oh, and I saw Ryder Cooley eating there as well.

I've gotten back into playing The Sims 4 in the past few days, and I honestly feel a little guilty that I'm neglecting other video games that actually have a defined endpoint. I played through Glory of Heracles up through Troy, where the difficulty seemed to ramp up quickly; it was never all that hard before. And in Final Fantasy IX, which I have on my PC, the part where Kuja forces you to go to the Forgotten Continent was kicking my ass. I always have plans to do so much when I'm not working, but they often go awry. Even fun things can be frustrating if you're not in the right mood.

About a month ago, I jumped on the bandwagon and signed up for a Dreamwidth account as a backup for my LiveJournal. I don't write there much at all anymore, but I did for years and don't want to lose any of it. But now I have something I wanted to write about that doesn't really fit my WordPress format (as loosely defined as that may be), so here goes.


On Sunday night, Beth and I went on a moonlight tour of Green-Wood Cemetery. It was led by the cemetery's historian, accompanied by two accordion players who provided music for when we walked from one place to the next. Songs I remember them playing include "Erie Canal" (Beth thought it was "Sixteen Tons," and there's definitely a similarity there), "Blue Moon," "Over the Rainbow," "Walking After Midnight," and "Battle Hymn of the Republic." The historian gave a brief lecture on each of the sites we encountered. The first was a bronze statue of DeWitt Clinton, Mayor of New York City, Governor of New York, United States Senator, and 1812 presidential candidate.

He was largely responsible for the Erie Canal, which is represented on the statue's pedestal. While originally buried in a friend's vault near Albany, his remains were transferred to Green-Wood sixteen years later. He was also the inspiration for this song by John Linnell of They Might Be Giants, as part of his House of Mayors project:

I believe the only still-living mayor to receive a piece on the record was David Dinkins, who couldn't figure out what it had to do with him. I'm pretty sure only Linnell really knows the significance of any of these. Well, excepting "Fernando Wood," which quotes him. I think the neighborhood where Linnell lives, or at least lived a few years ago, is adjacent to the cemetery. Maybe he goes there by himself to do interpretive dances.


Known as the Beard Bear, this marks the burial place of William Holbrook Beard, who was known for his political cartoons featuring anthropomorphic animals. The statue is by Dan Ostermiller, and was finished in 2002, 102 years after Beard's death.


My picture here isn't very good, but this headstone features an incredibly intricate scene carved by Patrizio Piatti. From the description, it sounds like it portrays Jane Griffith's husband going off to work on the day she dies of a heart attack. Kind of morbid, perhaps, but tastes in funerary matters change over time.

We looked around inside a mausoleum, which reminded Beth of Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, I suppose because it was run-down and divided into small rooms.

Interestingly, within the past week or so, I found links to rumors about the locations of both Biblical arks, Noah's Ark and the Ark of the Covenant. I seem to recall that, when I first learned about these two arks, I didn't know why the translation used the same word for both, when the latter wasn't a boat. Except it kind of was, or at least a vessel used for conveying something.
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Today is both Arbor Day and Walpurgis Night, two holidays to which I've never put a whole lot of thought. Frankly, I'm not quite sure why, if we already had Arbor Day, we really needed Earth Day, especially in the same month. Did the creators of Earth Day think Arbor Day had gotten too commercial? I know I'm sick of how you can't walk into a store at this time of year without finding racks of Arbor Day cards, green and brown M&M's, and novelty oak trees that play Joni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" when you clap your hands. And what about that annoyingly commercial mascot, Millie the Lonely Maple, the source of a song by Johnny Marks and a Rankin-Bass stop-motion special? Anyway, I hope you planted a tree today, because I didn't.


As for Walpurgis Night, it's actually named after St. Walpurga, the eighth-century English missionary to what is now Germany. It really sounds, however, like it should be some kind of creature that's part walrus and part something else. Maybe a cross between a walrus, a cat, and a jellyfish. If I knew how to draw, maybe I'd come up with my own depiction of this monstrosity, but I don't. Maybe one of my fans could do it, if I had fans. Anyway, in Germany, it's regarded as the night when witches meet for their crazy celebrations on the mountain known as Brocken or Blocksberg. I don't think you see as much of that here. America has a reputation of being unfriendly to witches, what with the stories of witches being burned alive by the Puritans in Salem. This, however, is entirely untrue. The Puritans actually HANGED witches, which is an important distinction. Hanging leaves the body intact and able to be resurrected with a spell like Life 3 from Final Fantasy VI. And really, what self-respecting magic-worker WOULDN'T take such a precaution before going to the gallows? The only problem was the people they were hanging WEREN'T witches, but simply unpopular people. Perhaps witch hunts were yet another case of the popular kids attacking the nerds. You know, the eggheads who thought medicine was more effective than a Hail Mary for curing disease.


Since it's past midnight, I guess that means it's technically May Day, which was widely regarded as the first day of summer before everyone became sticklers for the solstice. I'll be sure to celebrate by dancing around the maypole and watching that Rankin-Bass classic, Bella, the Beltane Bellbird.

If you read through the Bible, you'll notice a constant theme of people predicting the end of the world as we know it, or at least a huge supernatural event. In the parts of Isaiah that probably weren't actually written by Isaiah, the author predicts the total destruction of Babylon and Edom, and the exaltation of the Jews. While the Jews were allowed to return to Judea and reinstate the full practice of their religion after the Persians conquered Babylon, the city wasn't destroyed. It was maintained by the Persians as a regional capital, and it remained a significant cultural center until the battles between Alexander the Great's successors resulted in its decline. As for Edom, it remained until the time of the Jewish Wars in the early AD years, and the area is still inhabited. I believe most of it is now part of the Kingdom of Jordan. And while the Jews were restored and granted considerably more freedom than they had been by the Assyrians or Babylonians, they remained part of a larger empire, and I haven't heard of Judaism really spreading much in those days.


While purported to take place in the time of the Babylonian captivity, scholars now regard the Book of Daniel as having been written in the time of the Greek occupation, and to deal with that time period. In several dreams involving beasts and angels, Daniel learns that the Archangel Michael will eventually overthrow the Greeks, and that "one like a son of man" will rule over the entire world. Also, the resurrection of the dead will happen around the same time. Parts of the once-popular apocryphal Book of Enoch were also believed to have been written around this time, and they deal more directly with the "one like a son of man," identifying this figure as Enoch himself having returned to Earth. Once again, the Jews did eventually achieve victory over the Greeks, and I'm sure the common belief among the faithful was that God had helped them in their struggle. While I personally find it unnecessary to credit anything that can be explained in a natural manner to a supernatural power, others might well see this as the very point of religion. Even if God doesn't directly intervene in human affairs, the stories told about Him can inspire people to do great things on their own. I'm meeting you halfway, theists! {g}


The New Testament has its own apocalyptic book in Revelation, and we see the same themes at work again. This time the foreign power to be overthrown is Rome, although John of Patmos refers to it in code as "Babylon." Indeed, there's a lot of material there borrowed from Old Testament apocalyptic prophecies. The beasts of Daniel are back in slightly modified forms, Michael is fighting for the faithful again, and the Son of Man shows up. Only this time, since the work is Christian (albeit dating to a time when Christians still considered themselves to be Jews), he's specifically said to be Jesus on his triumphal return to Earth. And in this case, the book was pretty far off from what actually happened. A Jewish revolt was put down by the Romans, and the Jews scattered throughout the world. Christianity continued to develop, but in a form with less direct Jewish influence. The Roman Empire thrived for some time, and eventually Christianity became its official religion. I don't think John would have seen that twist coming. Some took this as a sign that the millennial kingdom had already arrived (despite the fact that things still weren't all that great, and indeed European civilization entered a period of gradual decline), while many centuries later the Protestants would regard the Catholic Church as the new Roman Empire to be overthrown by Jesus.


As we can see, pretty much every major struggle in the Bible is thought to be a sign of the coming of the Messianic Age, and every time the prophets have been wrong. As usual, though, this doesn't bother the faithful, who just insist that the prophecies are actually dealing with something else that hasn't happened yet. The predictions about the Greeks were reinterpreted during the Roman era, and I hear plenty of people today holding to an end times scenario that's made up of components of Revelation, Daniel, and several other sources. Most of it, however, isn't really in the Bible at all. Someone came up with the Rapture and the Antichrist as possible interpretations of certain passages, and now it's hard to find a Christian apocalyptic scenario that doesn't include them, despite there being no specific references to them in the scriptures. And these prophecies always relate to things that are happening today. I can't help but think that John of Patmos would have been pissed off if he'd known that the stuff he was writing about wouldn't actually come true for another 2000 years. But anyway, apparently the people of all these earlier eras were wrong about WHEN the great Day of the Lord would occur, but they were correct in thinking it would happen. I can't predict the future, but I can't help finding a pattern here, and thinking that today's apocalypse-mongers aren't bothering to take into account that people have been predicting the end of the world for ages now, and it's never happened. And if it ever does, it will probably be due to an explainable phenomenon (if nothing else, then the Sun becoming a red giant in another few billion years, although I doubt humanity will still be around then), not to the Messiah and the angels arriving to do some supernatural damage.

It's well known that Jesus was not the first deity said to have been resurrected from the dead. The Egyptian Osiris was killed and brought back. Odin sacrificed himself on the World Tree for wisdom, which wouldn't have done him much good if he hadn't come back to life. Bacchus/Dionysus was resurrected in a rather different manner, with his mother having died and his being born from Zeus's thigh. Another deity I've seen mentioned in this context is the Phrygian Attis, but the evidence for this isn't fully convincing. A quick Internet search has resulted in some usually fairly thorough sources, like Wikipedia not even mentioning resurrection, but merely the preservation of Attis' body. Still, there do seem to be some parallels between the festival of Attis and the celebration of Easter, so it's as good a time as any to discuss this mythical figure.


Attis originated in Asia Minor, although some aspects of his worship later spread to Greece and Rome. His birth story begins with Cybele, the Phrygian Earth Mother goddess. She had as a child a hermaphroditic demon named Agdistis. The Greek version of the story says that Agdistis was conceived when Zeus, having his sexual advances toward Cybele rebuffed, resorted to masturbating on top of her. I'm inclined to believe this wasn't part of the original myth, but rather something added by the Greeks to tie it in with their own pantheon. And since the Greeks already HAD a Mother Earth figure in Gaia, Cybele seems to have been retconned as a more minor nature deity. Anyway, the gods were just as frightened by a double-gendered deity as many people still are today, and castrated the demon. The cast-off genitals grew into an almond tree, and when Nana, the virgin daughter of the river god Sangarius, pressed one of the almonds to her breast, she ended up pregnant. (See, I TOLD you abstinence wasn't an effective way to prevent pregnancy!) Nana left her son Attis out in the wild to die, but he was tended by a goat and later adopted by humans, although their names apparently weren't worth mentioning. Cybele fell in love with the beautiful youth, apparently not knowing he was, in bizarre convoluted fashion, her grandson. When Attis tried to marry the Princess of Pessinus, Cybele became angry at him, and either she herself or Agdistis showed up at the wedding to drive Attis insane. In his madness, he castrated himself, and for some reason his father-in-law (whom some Greeks identified as Midas, the guy who had the golden touch at another point in his life) followed suit. Attis then died, but Cybele managed to preserve the body. At least, that's what appears to have been the more common story, and the one that can be linked with Easter. The Lydian version says that Zeus, jealous of the people's worship of Cybele, sent a boar to kill Attis and other Lydians, which is why the Gauls of Lydia didn't eat pork.


The festival of Attis, which lasted well into Roman times, involved cutting down a pine tree (the kind of tree under which the mythical character died), decorating it with violets (which sprang from Attis' blood as he died), and bringing it to a sanctuary, where the priests would cut themselves and sprinkle their blood all over the tree. These same priests were known to castrate themselves when entering into the order, in veneration of Attis' own actions. If you had a low tolerance for pain, Attis probably was not the god for you. Anyway, the worshippers mourned the dead Attis for three days, after which they had a wild celebration of his resurrection or bodily preservation. By the Roman calendar, this festival took place on the twenty-second through twenty-fifth of March, around the time of the vernal equinox. Although the date of Easter is based on a lunar calendar rather than a solar one, 25 March was often associated with Jesus' death, as well as his conception. There was a belief at that time that his living an exact number of years had to do with his being a prophet, or something like that, although I don't know how that idea originated. I'm sure it was no coincidence that this had him being born at the beginning of winter and dying at its end, nor that it meant Christian holidays could be transplanted onto existing pagan festivals. And the spring death does make sense, as Jesus is said in all known sources to have died during Passover. If Easter was influenced by the festival of Attis, that could explain why it's common rhetoric that Jesus was dead for three days before coming back to life, although the story as told in the Bible makes it only about a day and a half. It's also possible, however, that this figure is to coincide with Jonah's being inside the big fish for "three days and three nights." Or maybe it's both.

Based on what I've read on the subject, the literal truth of the Bible is a subject that's been debated for much longer than modern fundamentalists would probably care to admit. Arguments over whether books like Job and Jonah should be taken as true history or fables date back pretty far. When Christianity was being developed, church leaders debated how much of the Old Testament they were going to accept, and how much of the old law that they were largely rejecting should still be taken as applying literally. As scientific and historical research have progressed and demonstrated that, for instance, the Earth revolves around the Sun and is much more than a few thousand years old, there are Christians who will try to reconcile these new discoveries with the Bible, and others who lash out against them and perhaps start taking the Bible even MORE literally.


I would posit that it really isn't possible to take the Bible entirely literally. It just contradicts itself way too often for anyone who actually knows the conflicting stories to accept both as the literal truth. Sure, some people will deny there are any contradictions, but when they try to explain a seeming contradiction away, they'll usually either admit that certain parts of the Bible should be understood figuratively, or come up with a convoluted excuse that hardly counts as a literal interpretation. It's apparently a common belief among fundamentalists these days that dinosaurs lived alongside humans, when the Bible obviously says no such thing, and they'll insist that this is taking the book literally. Still, while total and complete literalism is essentially impossible, there are believers who come awfully close. To them, Adam and Eve, the talking trickster snake, fruit that provides knowledge, a worldwide flood, and people living to be hundreds of years old are all actual historical details.


There are a few different ways to interpret these Bible stories non-literally. One is to regard them as fable, with the important part not being whether Adam and Eve really existed, but what their story says about the human condition. Sort of like Jesus' own parables, except not specifically identified as such. Another is a symbolic view, where everything stands for something else. One of the best examples of this sort of interpretation is the Epistle of Barnabas, a Gnostic letter attributed to Paul's companion Barnabas, but much more likely written after his time. He dismisses Judaism as a misinterpretation of the Old Testament, and holds that the passages that seem to be describing distinctly Jewish things are actually pointing to Christianity. Our pseudo-Barnabas says, for instance, that circumcision is unnecessary, but that the description of Abraham circumcising all the males in his household (318 people, according to Genesis 14:14) is significant because some number games result in letters standing for Jesus and the cross. As for the kosher dietary laws, they really just mean not to act like any of the animals that were forbidden to eat. This document obviously wasn't accepted into the canon, but I still hear some interpretations along the same lines today. Harold Camping, owner of the rather extreme even by radio fundamentalist standards Family Radio, frequently insists that just about everything in the Old Testament is "a picture of Christ" or "a picture of salvation." I know he's said King David is a representation of Jesus, because who better to represent a celibate pacifist than a promiscuous war leader, right? :P Mind you, he also considers all of these metaphorical stories to be literally true.


I'm sure some less stubborn Christians would admit that not all of the Bible is entirely true, but would still insist that it's all IMPORTANT. And I can't really argue with that, as the people who wrote and compiled the work wouldn't have included things they didn't think were important. Then again, what was important to them might not be the same as what we find significant in this modern age, when, for instance, the Temple in Jerusalem no longer exists. And I get the impression that some of the people who insist that the Bible is all important also think it has a simple message. Well, no. If it's all important, than its message is complicated, convoluted, and contradictory. And if the only important thing in the whole Bible is the part that deals with belief in Jesus, then how are the sections that have nothing to do with that important? As a non-religious person who nonetheless takes a good deal of interest in the Bible, I have to say that regarding everything in it as simply reinforcing one basic idea is kind of disrespectful to the variety of material to be found in the book. Why would we need metaphorical stories to illustrate the importance of Jesus when we have the New Testament to say that verbatim?

To finish this series on Biblical authorship, I turn to the New Testament, which usually consists of twenty-seven books. These are primarily letters to various churches and individuals, plus five books of stories and one of prophecy. The first four are the Gospels, of which there are many more than four. So why only four in the Bible? Well, that was the decision of Irenaeus of Lyons, second century Bishop of Lugdunum. He argued that there should be four Gospels because there are four winds and four corners of the Earth. Even though it would have been pretty well-known by this time that the world was round, and hence didn't HAVE corners. Maybe he just liked the number four. Anyway, the Gospels are all anonymously written, but tradition developed linking them to important figures in early Christianity, based largely on the style of each one. Matthew was attributed to one of Jesus' twelve disciples, the former tax collector Matthew or Levi. Its content is largely Jewish in nature, showing how Jesus was the fulfillment of various Old Testament prophecies (as well as some things that really WEREN'T prophecies). Working against this attribution are the likelihood that the book was originally written in Greek instead of Aramaic, as well as the fact that our supposed Matthew seems to have relied on secondary sources. In fact, while early tradition had Matthew as the first Gospel written, scholars now seem to be quite largely in agreement that Mark was the first, and Matthew used Mark as a source. Its credited writer was John Mark the Evangelist, a cousin of Barnabas and companion of Paul, suggesting that even the early church didn't regard it as an eyewitness account. From what I've seen, Mark tends to be the least popular of the Gospels, with preachers preferring the more stylized accounts in the other three. The author of Luke claims to be a physician, writing to someone in Rome named Theophilus, and trying to provide more of a historical context for the deeds of Jesus. In doing so, however, it appears that he was often too eager to link Jesus' life to events that would have happened around the same time, resulting in such gaffes as his overly complicated tale of everyone having to travel to the homes of their ancestors during the census. The same author wrote the Book of Acts, some parts of which are delivered in first person, hence implying that he was Paul's companion. John, the final Gospel and the one with the most mystical, metaphysical conception of Jesus, was attributed to another one of Jesus' apostles, John son of Zebedee. It was a popular idea that John was "the disciple Jesus loved" who's mentioned several times in the book, but it seems rather bizarre that John would have said, in essence, "Yeah, Jesus liked ME the best, suckers!" This same apostle was credited with the three letters of John and the Revelation to John, but stylistic differences make it unlikely that the same guy composed all of them. The author of Revelation makes it clear that his name is John, but he never claims to have been a disciple, or to have written a Gospel. And while the Gospel of John is heavy on Greek mysticism, Revelation is more Jewish in flavor, making constant Old Testament allusions. Not to mention that, with the dates generally given for these books, John would have had to have been really old when he wrote them.


Unlike the Gospels, the authorship of many of the letters that made it into the New Testament is quite clear. The most represented letter-writer is, of course, Paul. That said, Paul was so well-known for his epistles that it's pretty likely some were also forged in his name. In fact, even when the canon was first being determined, doubt was cast on the letter to the Hebrews being the work of Paul. It seems that the church fathers threw this one in just because it was popular, and they liked its theology. Do you get the idea by now that these church fathers weren't all that consistent in their decision-making? The non-Pauline epistles are even more difficult to place. The two letters of Peter were most likely not the work of the apostle. James was commonly said to have been written by Jesus' brother, head of the church in Jerusalem, but he makes no indication of this and a lot of people were named James. Jude is often attributed to a less famous brother of Jesus, called Judas in the Gospels, but again this isn't so much based on actual evidence.


Really, what I've read in and about the various books of the Bible suggests that the whole thing is basically a hodgepodge, with a lot of things being included or excluded simply due to their relative popularity or the preferred theology of the people making the decisions. And in some ways, this is a good thing, because it resulted in different opinions being presented. Can Moabites enter into the Jewish congregation? Is God the author of evil? Was Jesus human or divine? In all of these cases, there are passages to support both sides. The fact that the book was largely cobbled together makes it, in many ways, a much more valuable source than it would have been if it had been entirely written by one person. But when people claim that the entire Bible is the holy word of God and nothing else is, I have to wonder how much they actually know about how it was written and compiled. Why would the Holy Spirit have been more likely to have worked in the particular authors represented and the particular councils making the decisions than with anyone else? Mind you, I'm writing this as someone who isn't religious at all, but I have to say I have more respect for a believer who does their own research than one who just accepts wholesale what other people tell them. People who think the Bible has a simple message and that they know exactly what God is telling them seem to be missing that the deeds and sayings of a non-human intelligence presumably WOULDN'T be easily interpreted by mere mortals. Yeah, sure, your deity is unknowable but you know for a fact that He hates gays and opposes the teaching of evolution, and that YOU'RE going to end up in Heaven. You really don't see the problems with that line of thinking?