going against canon

[rivendellrose]

I'm sorry, this is going to be a horribly irreverent post - but who among you isn't used to that from me, by now?

Look, everybody - it's the world's first known example of fanfiction! And it's Bible-fic, of course. XD

Seriously, though - I do wonder how stuff like this ends up getting written, and what the author would think of us finding it almost a millenium later. The whole canonisation debate, the Gnostic gospels in comparison to the gospels that were eventually chosen as acceptable for the canon... it just reads like so much "he said, she said" to me, and it amuses the hell out of me. In the context of so many conflicting ideas and mixed messages about even the most basic aspects of Christianity, I really wonder how anyone can look at the official final product as anything worth trusting.

I'm an English major. We talk about how playing the game of authorial intent is dangerous even for books where you can go interview the actual, original, honest-to-God writer and ask "hey, what did you mean by this passage?" We talk about how many readings are possible of any given text - and that's in the original language, with little or no cultural change involved, in a book that was written a year ago. Imagine what that means for a religious text put together by committee, over the course of millenia, and then translated probably half a dozen times and reinterpreted each time for whatever political regime was trying to justify itself at the time!

As for this text in particular, I would just like to point out - we Snape fans are clearly not the first people to cling desperately to our love of a fictional ambiguous character, despite all contrary evidence. Rowling, I hope you're watching this little saga - we ficcers could be so much worse. Can you imagine, a bunch of people running around 3rd century Middle East wearing "I still trust Judas" buttons?

Comments

[diea.livejournal.com]

OMG I want a "I still trust Judas" button. Only to be difficult, because sometimes that's fun.

I took a class in college called "Biblical Literature" in which we learned that even from the very first chapters of the very first book, there are disagreements as to whether they were all written together or are in fact an amalgamation of beliefs borrowed from the cultures and religions of the people living around the Jews at various periods. Genesis is really just that. Someone wrote a creation story. Someone else added some stuff to it and took out other parts. Still someone else took the rewrite and tried to streamline it all together, though if you pay attention, it's possible to see the different cut-off points. That class went a long way in helping me rid myself of Christianity, because if I can't believe that the Bible is the unaltered Word of God, how can I believe anything about what it teaches?

I do think it ironic that I had to go to this small, private, religious college to lose my faith.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I thought that one might get you. ;)

That class went a long way in helping me rid myself of Christianity, because if I can't believe that the Bible is the unaltered Word of God, how can I believe anything about what it teaches?

That's exactly what always perplexes me about organized religion, and the various Mosaic religions in particular - we know exactly how and why these things were written and altered over time, so how in the hell can that not make people seriously question their validity? I just don't get it. I know I'm excessively jaded and non-conformist when it comes to religion, but... it just boggles my mind. I have a hard time with any system that says "you can't possibly know right without God telling you, and by the way you're going to get that word of God via a ton of men who lived centuries to millenia ago and definitely had their own agendas. 'Kay?" Umm... no.

If we were created intentionally by some kind of higher intelligence, that intelligence created us with all the foibles and instincts we have, and it also created us with consciousness, self-relfection, and brains. I think it probably wanted us to use those. Far as I'm concerned, any deity worth following would be pissed off at us just blindly following what some random person tells us is Writ By God. Who the hell is he (inevitably HE) to speak for the incarnate?

Sorry about the rant. I'm avoiding writing a paper, so I naturally keep blathering about everything else in the world. :P

And if your college made you question and doubt, clearly it did its job as a liberal arts education!

[barn-swallow.livejournal.com]

Wow, Judas had a really good publicist @_@

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Too bad the guy apparently had a full docket - it was about 200 years to really help him... Talk about court delays. ;)

[barn-swallow.livejournal.com]

And a bad filing system too, since we just found out about it now! But maybe he can still get a movie deal out of it, you never know...

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Well, when your idea of filing paperwork is sticking it under a rock in a cave for 'safe-keeping'....

Now there's a thought. "The amazing true story, as told by the victim himself!"

[lovelies.livejournal.com]

There are so many things wrong with how the publicization of the text has been/is being handled that it makes my hair on end.

[lovelies.livejournal.com]

*stand on end. Completely scatter-brained day, today.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I knew what you meant (and, happily, my brain did the little fill-in-the-blank thing, so I didn't actually see that you'd missed a word til I saw this comment... ah, the brain). And I'm totally with you on the scatter-brained thing. :P

Yeah, there's tons of problems with the whole situation - I'm glad I never was Christian, or it'd give me nightmare crises of faith just thinking about it.

[lovelies.livejournal.com]

I suppose it's naivete to hope that we'd have evolved beyond petty greed when it comes to the pursuit of knowledge and science. It's been a rather rude awakening for me that manuscript and artefact dealing is still happening, that someone can hold human history for ransom.

Even though the media is certainly making a bigger stink out of this text than the last hundred discoveries put together, I doubt it will cause anyone crises of faith here. It's fascinating how different the religious climate really is on the two sides of the pond.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that aspect of the story really freaked me out - the fact that the dealer only really turned it over to a museum because she couldn't resell, probably because of the degree to which the poor old thing was falling apart. I can't believe how stupid people are about antiquities. These sorts of things should not belong to any one person. They need to be held in trust and properly cared for, for the same of history.

It really is. I doubt that this will cause too many crises of faith over here, either, but that's because Americans are notoriously bull-headed, particularly when it comes to our religions. I think the root of the problem really is that all the dissenters and wackos moved out of Europe over the last several hundred years... and where did they go? The 'new world,' of course. So here we are.

Someone really ought to take a serious theological look at the differences between the two sides, though - I'm sure there's a lot of interesting comparisons waiting to be made, but I've never heard of such a study, and most of my religions texts have been hopelessly US-centric when it came to Western religions.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I doubt that this will cause too many crises of faith over here, either, but that's because Americans are notoriously bull-headed, particularly when it comes to our religions.

Well and the fact that there are already scads of noncanonical gospels floating around, and even the canonical texts often seem contradictory, so plenty of people have already had their crises of faith or just chosen not to think about it or whatever.

Who ever would have thought a Leftie would be saying "The dissenters came here and that's why things are so f*cked up."

Honestly, I read the article and thought (a) Well years ago I was thinking that without the Betrayal there is no Crucifixion and without the Crucifixion there is no Resurrection, so Judas was wholly necessary and if you actually think about it much one shouldn't villify him (b) this Jesus is rocking a hardcore body/spirit dichotomy, which I thought was a Greek thing and not a Jewish thing, which makes me doubt this particular text like whoa.

[taradilien.livejournal.com]

I remember arguing point a when I was in school. Glad to know I'm not alone.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Glad to know I'm not alone.

Me too :)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Good point on (a) - honestly, I think one of the soft points of Christian doctrine is that people like Judas and even Satan are necessary (hence, so to are contemporary disbelievers, etc). If God created all and is omniscient and all-powerful, then clearly he knew what these people would do and, in fact, intended them to do it. So either he's a sadistic bastard who likes to make people suffer, or there's a divine plan that includes Lucifer going arrogant and trying to steal the throne, Judas turning on Jesus, etc. And that brings in the whole free will debate that the Greeks had to handle because of the gods and fate and all that - is it still your fault if you do something and it was willed by fate (or, in this case, God)? Is it right for Satan (or Judas, or anybody) to be punished eternally for something they did, when clearly it must've been part of God's plan? Or is there ultimate free will that God has nothing to do with, and therefore God's powers are intensely limited?

Obviously, I have no answers - this is why I stick with spirituality rather than religion. More uncertainty, but also less brain-breaking and paradoxes.

The spirit/body dichotomy is totally more Greek than Jewish, yeah, but my impression was that early Christianity was highly influenced by Greek thought - is it a sure thing that the Judaism of Christ's time wouldn't have had sects that were equally influenced? My background on that time in Jewish/Christian history is pretty fuzzy, to be honest.

[lovelies.livejournal.com]

Palestine was ruled by both Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleuchid empire following Alexander the Great with varying degrees of forced hellenization, so Judaism, especially urban Judaism, was indeed heavily influenced by Greek thought - especially when it came to the upper echelons of society.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I thought that was the case, but it's been a long time since my last class on Western religions. Thanks for the clarification!

[lovelies.livejournal.com]

Yeah, really. Where are the Indiana Joneses when you need them. "This belongs in a museum!"

Well, to caricatyrize: here, in North Europe people have the basis of their faith in theology whose foundations were laid by an exegete, while the Anglo-Saxon area has the basis of its faith in theology whose foundations were laid by a lawyer. ;-)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Archaeology totally needs more Indiana Joneses, in every sense. Not least because I want one for my own nefarious purposes. ;)

I'll have to take your word on Northern Europe, but the characterization of the Anglo-Saxon area sounds pretty accurate. Never underestimate the moving factors of pragmatism, I guess.

[kjog.livejournal.com]

ha ha! Beautiful.

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Thought you might enjoy that. ;)