In Which Sarah Has Not Always Been Right

I found this article today, Biblical Evidence for the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, that really made me think.

When things I eagerly long for (like being a college graduate) so often entail things I'm not so thrilled about (like the reality of doing homework), such finds are lovely.  It's unspeakably wonderful to have the beautiful, rich faith I want so much to share be, in reality, so well-supported by Scripture.

I'm afraid that's all for tonight, because the reality of homework calls.

Even for that, thanks be to God.

The Deeper Story (or, What Can We Know About Yeshua ha-Notsri?)

1) What is the meaning of human existence?

2) What is the meaning of death?

3) Is there more than the material world?

4) Who was Yeshua ha-Notsri...

Yeshua ha-Notsri is better known as Jesus of Nazareth.  What can we know about this person, from a purely historical point of view?

First of all, he was a historical figure.  

An enormous wealth of historical evidence exists that places him in Roman-occupied Israel in about 30 A.D.  Even barring the Gospels, other writers' mention of him is enough to establish his existence, by standards of historical scholarship.

• Tacitus, in about 116 A.D., describes how the Christians followed one "Christus", who suffered "the extreme penalty" under Pontius Pilate, during the reign of Tiberius (Roman emperor from 42 B.C. to 37 A.D.)
  His report is quite disparaging towards the Christians, so it is unlikely that this was a later Christian interpolation.
• Josephus, in about 93 A.D., wrote a famous passage known as the Testimonium Flavianum, which almost certainly has suffered Christian interpolation.  However, most scholars believe that part of the Testimonium is genuine, based on textual and stylistic analysis.
  For example, Origen wrote in about 243 A.D. that Josephus did not believe that Jesus was the Christ.  This casts doubt on the sentence, "He was the Christ" in Josephus' work, and probably dates the interpolation to later than Origen's time.  However, in the same work, Origen quotes Josephus regarding "James, the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ".
  So we have definite testimony linking this person Jesus, or Yeshua, to the one who was called "Christ" or "Christus" in Latin.
  We can with relative confidence accept the opinion of most secular scholars, that the basic factual statements of Josephus here are genuine: that Jesus amazed many people among the Jews, that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, that he had a brother named James, and that a group of his followers survived after his death.
• The Babylonian Talmud mentions a person who was probably Jesus several times, calling him Yeshua or Yeshu. The work is strikingly antagonistic toward Jesus and his family and followers, but it does offer some valuable historical data points.  Specifically, it describes the death of Yeshua during Passover, that he had followers, and that he was opposed by the Jewish rabbis.
• Lucian, who was a noted satirist in the 100's A.D., wrote about the early Christians and their basic beliefs.  His satirical account describes Yeshua as a crucified teacher who had many followers.
• (This one is mostly a point of interest, not a strong historical reference.) Thallus was a Samaritan historian from the 100's A.D. about whom only a little is known. He documents a mid-day darkness and earthquake occurring in Judea around the time of Jesus' death.  He attributes it to a solar eclipse. (Modern understanding of solar eclipses rules this out as an explanation for a three-hour darkness like that described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke.)
  Unfortunately, this particular passage is known only as quoted by Julius Africanus, a Christian scholar from the 200's A.D.  It may not be genuine, which is why I only include it for completeness' sake. The passage is interesting in that if it is genuine, Thallus here provides an explanation for the darkness, rather than denying it.

These references are from a variety of different authors from different regions.  In science, experiments may be repeated dozens of times.  However, according to the norms of historical scholarship, the basic facts about Jesus' life are very well-established. The number and diversity of sources that support these facts makes them very solid by historical standards.

For comparison, only about eight ancient sources have written about Hannibal, who fought Rome in the First Punic War in the 200's and 100's B.C.  Some of them are contemporaries, but some were first recorded 200 - 400 years after the events.  The earliest manuscripts we have of them date later than that.
These sources establish Yeshua as a Jewish teacher who attracted followers, was opposed by the Jews, was crucified by the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, and whose followers remained together for at least some time after his death, despite persecution at times.

An important non-canon Christian source is the Didache.  The Didache was widely disseminated by 100 A.D., though it may have been written in whole or in part much earlier.  The Didache outlines important practices of the early church and is a very interesting document overall.  It was lost for centuries, then rediscovered in 1873.

For the purpose of historical inquiry about Jesus, its most important function is probably corroborating major parts of the Lord's prayer, and the Sermon on the Mount, and demonstrating that a group of Jesus' followers were worshiping him by this time.

Now I turn to the Biblical sources. These sources must be taken in light of their authorship.  However, honest scholarship demands that they cannot be simply discarded. Historians would examine the text, the corroboration, and the nature of the events described and decide what is probably legitimate and what is probably not.

For example, for many years, historians believed that The Iliad was fiction.  But archaeological discoveries have largely confirmed the existence of the city of Troy, the Trojan War is now an accepted historical event, and now most historians believe that the basic events described in The Iliad happened.

First, I note that the gospel stories agree with the secular historical story described above.

The next important point about Matthew, Mark, Luke-Acts, and John is that what we have today is almost without a doubt what was originally recorded, with very little significant variation.  

• Textual comparisons of known versions of the New Testament show that two-thirds of the text is identical between the versions, with the only differences being spelling of names or single words.
  Of the one-third remaining, most are spelling or grammar mistakes.  "Few or none" affect any theological doctrine.
• The versions of the New Testament we have today come mostly from the early Greek or Latin translations.  However, manuscripts have been found in a dozen or so other languages, with superb agreement between previously unknown texts and those in use for centuries. According to Wikipedia, if the Greek manuscripts were lost, the entire text would be present in these other manuscripts.  If these were lost, the New Testament could also be assembled from quotations by early Church Fathers alone.
• Extant manuscripts number in the ten-thousands.

The next point is that the gospels (and Acts) were written within 50 - 100 years of the life of Yeshua, according to secular and Christian historians. Pauline Epistles appeared somewhat earlier, some by 25 years after Jesus' death in 33 A.D.  

Particularly, 1 Corinthians was most likely written in 53 - 57 A.D.  1 Corinthians is significant because it contains an important confession of faith, believed by many to be an early creed.  Read it, then please, let no one continue with the idea that belief in the resurrection developed legendarily over time. Other Biblical passages and non-canon sources demonstrate that belief in the divinity of Yeshua was also fully present by this time.
For comparison, other ancient sources are usually 200 or more years removed from the events described.  Many are more than 500 years removed or even 1000 years removed.  Examination of these sources shows that legendary embellishment does occur, but not within the first 300 - 500 years.  I'm particularly thinking of the legends about Alexander the Great.
I also note that legendary material about Jesus did develop, and was refuted by believers at that time as incorrect.  I'm thinking here of the Apocryphal gospels. These gospels do contain the marks of legendary development, particularly in the case of the "Gospel of Peter".

I won't get into the archaeological support for Luke-Acts, but it is significant. If you're interested, email me or do a quick Google search.

To be clear, I am not demanding that anyone agree with me about what this means.  However, I believe that any free-thinking individual must come to terms with what happened concerning Yeshua ha-Notsri in Israel twenty centuries ago.

In summary, the reason I am compelled to this faith? 

According to every historical document known, Jesus was tortured to death by the Romans.  But within only 20 years of his death, his followers were loudly proclaiming that he had risen from the dead and that he was God, despite a strongly monotheistic background in a religiously-based society.  This occurred despite all previous Jewish understanding about the Messiah. They continued to proclaim this fervently, despite Roman and Jewish opposition.  Except for Judas and John, all of the original apostles eventually died for their belief in the resurrection of Yeshua ha-Notsri. People sometimes die for things that aren't true.  But no one dies for a belief he knows isn't true. 

One simply must account for this situation in some intelligent way. 

Now, the really pertinent question at this point is #3: is there more than the material world? 

Basically, if there is nothing besides the material world, then Yeshua actually rising from the dead is out of the question.  Some other explanation must be found.

But if that's the route we are taking, we must admit to ourselves that we are barring anything non-material, axiomatically and from the beginning.

Every religious belief system accepts some things axiomatically, as fact and without proof.  Most of them  accept something like, 

A spiritual world that is not necessarily scientifically measurable exists.

Agnosticism says, 

One ought not believe in what he does not know.

Atheism says, 

Nothing exists beyond the material world.

Like any axiom, we may choose to accept the one that leads to the most meaningful combination of conclusions.  For example, geometry gets very boring if we do not accept axiomatically that points and lines can exist.  We can't mathematically prove that they do.  We just accept it.  

If you don't start with some axioms in describing the world around you, it gets very boring.  For example, in my personal belief system, I once started with, 

The experience I think I'm having is, in fact, happening.  If it is not, I can pretend it is.

Really, I have absolutely no way of knowing that.  But I decided to accept without further questioning that I am actually interacting with the world I think I see.  I also accepted without further questioning that "logic holds in the material world" and "it is not true that logic never holds in the spiritual world, if one exists". (Logic may hold at all times in the spiritual world, but I know even less about the spiritual world than I do about abstract algebra, which isn't much.  Thank God that I don't have a test on the spiritual world coming up in two weeks...)

So we know that we must accept some things without proof.  I'm not judging what you decide to accept. But please, as a favor to me, do not accept that the material world is all there is and then arrogantly announce that you're being purely logical.  That drives me crazy, and I've seen too much of it.

So there is my deeper story, and how I have dealt with the story of Yeshua ha-Notsri.

Be blessed. Thanks be to God.  

Sex and All His Friends

Since I noticed that no one has ever said or written anything on the topic of sex, I thought I should contribute something.

The Catholic ideas about sex are one of the most contentious issues in all of Catholic theology and morality.  I remember telling myself that even if (in some bizarre possible future) I became Catholic, I would be a "liberal" Catholic who quietly disregarded Church teaching on sex.

Like many Catholic teachings, the teaching on human sexuality is baffling if considered piecewise.  It only makes sense when considered as part of the entire body of Church teaching.  The practices only make sense when viewed in light of the relevant ideas behind them.

Catholic teaching about sex includes:

• Reserving sexual intercourse only for marriage
• Defining sex as vital to a marriage
• Staunchly reserving marriage: 
• For one man and one woman, who are capable of having sex, who know what they're doing
• To last until the death of one of the partners
• Declaring that sex fundamentally is for bonding and making babies; pleasure is a side benefit
• Declaring that any practice that separates or perverts that purpose is wrong (masturbation, sex while using contraception, in vitro fertilization, et cetera)

Raised as a devout Christian, I believed strongly that sex was only for marriage, pretty strongly that marriage was only for heterosexual people, and sort of that remarriage was wrong.

But I had no problem with birth control, and as a future career woman, rather liked the idea.  The Catholic stance is that sex while using some contraceptive is wrong.  The idea behind the practice is that sex is not for pleasure; sex is for producing children and bonding with one's spouse.

I had a few real objections, but most of my beef with this teaching was a strong sense of, "But I don't wanna..."

(You have my full permission to read that in the whiniest nasal tone you can manage, because my inner self was doing exactly that.)

Now I see that my biggest objection was my rebellion! I didn't like the idea that sexual pleasure was not the goal, because I wanted that pleasure for myself.

But slowly, I began to let go of what I wanted.  I began to let go of the idea that God created sex to make me happy.

One of the first things that happened surprised me the most.  My body insecurities started to go away.  (If you're a 60-year-old man, that probably is not that big of a deal.  But for a twenty-something college girl in modern America, this is a BIG DEAL.)

I still watch my weight carefully, because I know it's a struggle for me.  I still want to be slender and attractive, but now I want it more on the level of "it'd be cool if I could juggle", not as an obsessive need.

If I plan to marry someday, and see sex as a goal in its own sake, then it matters whether I'm the sexiest I can possibly be.  But if I see sex as simply a gateway to bigger blessings (a close relationship with a husband, the gift of children), I realize that I am not an object to make my future husband happy!

I've heard that many times, but it never stuck when the bigger idea behind it (that sex is a goal in itself) did, in fact, objectify me in precisely that way.

Additionally, the sexualized advertising and media out there has lost its gloss for me.  Touting sex for its own sake was okay when I thought of sex as primary existing for pleasure, with the small qualification that you had to be married.  But now I see sexualized clothing, advertisements, and television and feel mostly confusion, similar to what I feel when I read about people building things out of cheese.

Building structures out of cheese misses the point of cheese.

Pursuing sex for its own sake misses the point of sex.

The sad thing is, the point of sex is absolutely glorious and beautiful.  God uses human bodies to house his act of creation, and gives parents the wonderful gift of being direct participants in the process of creating a human being.  

J. Budziszewski points out that the power of creation belongs to God alone.  Humans simply recombine old things in new ways.  Only God truly creates new things.  It isn't creation when you mix sugar with tea to make sweetened tea.  It isn't creation when we build a skyscraper or write music or draw things.  God made the bricks, the tools, the instruments, the paper, and even structure, sound, and color.

And yet God accomplishes his true creation of a new human soul through the sexual interaction of human parents.  

Additionally, God uses a simple biological urge to draw human spouses close to each other, so that they can share a bond neither of them shares with anyone else.

This is the Catholic picture, and it is glorious.  But the unexpected fruits of it in my own life have surprised and delighted me. Thanks be to God.

An Announcement

This post is significantly different from all others I have made.

But I feel the need to shout something to the world, so here goes.

I'm going to medical school!


The match results came in on Tuesday, and I matched to the school I really wanted.

I also ran the numbers and realized that I'll be roughly $130,000 in debt in four years and still have 3 - 5 years of making $50,000 per year while working 80 hours a week in residency.  This is roughly twice the recommended amount of debt I should take on with the salary I can expect to earn even after residency, as a practicing physician.

But that's not what matters here.  God has been good to me; I marvel often at how the blessings of heaven are poured out on my head.
I'm doing what I really want to do, and I'm tremendously excited about the school, the hospital where I'll be training, and the city itself.

Thanks be to God.

The Politics of the Penguin

To make up for not posting yesterday, I'll share the latest thing that made me laugh out loud this morning.

Mark Shea, of www.markshea.blogspot.com, senior editor at CatholicExchange.com and InsideCatholic.com, wrote the following in his predictions for the new year:

Politically, I predict that the Stupid Evil Party and the Evil Stupid Party will work hand in hand (while feigning radically different agendas) to increase the power and riches of the rich and powerful.

 This, ladies and gentlemen, sums up my entire stance on politics and the reasons I rarely participate in it.  I sincerely hope therefore that it is the absolute last post on politics that will ever be seen here.

Good day!

The Antidote

Sometimes I find myself feeling gypped in this faith.

I catch myself thinking how inconvenient, almost rude, it seems that I would be expected to give up things that make me happy.  How can I be expected to sacrifice my deepest desires? It hurts to deny myself.  Why?

Why can't I decide who I want to have sex with? Why can't I decide how many children I want? Why can't I lie when it seems warranted to me?  Why can't I sleep in when I want to, watch what I want, and say exactly what I think on occasion?

Why am I not even allowed my basest self, my own selfishness?  How can I possibly be expected to give up, to deny myself?

I'm not the only one who feels this way.  I have seen downright outrage at the idea that homosexuals should live celibate lives.  Who has that kind of nerve, to deny someone sex and a lover for the rest of his life?  Who could possibly ask that?
I feel the outrage in myself, at the thought of living without contraceptives.  How on earth can I be expected to give up sex with the man I love for several days each month, or to welcome child after child into my family?  It's my life!  How can I be expected to suffer so?

But over and over I've noticed something when I sit in Mass or kneel in Adoration.  When I look up at the crucifix, my outrage vanishes.
When I look up at the representation of Jesus Christ in the Crucifixion, I understand in ways too deep for words how I can be expected to deny myself, to suffer for the sake of holiness.

This, then, is the antidote to the poisonous rebellion of the self: the cross, and the one who gladly bore it.

Want the Change

Happy New Year!

I've decided to widen the scope of this blog a bit to encompass a more than simply my searching about Catholicism.

One of my informal New Year's Vague-Inklings (as none of them can be properly called a "resolution") is to write here more.  So here we are.

Today Boyfriend and I drove to one of our favorite coffee shops, to program (for him) and read (for me) in a slightly different location than usual.  (Now he's staring intently at his code.  Each of his features is like an arrow, pointing at the screen in deep concentration.  He likes debugging code, but his face looks like if he can make all those arrows' vector sum in the direction of his laptop high enough, the code will submit to his will.)
I grabbed a couple of my new books, which turned out to be "Ten Poems to Change Your Life Again & Again" (by Roger Housden) and "The Everlasting Man" (by G.K. Chesterton).
As I read the first poem in the former book, the power of it swept me forward with something like a low-grade inspiration.  (Don't hurry; you must read poetry slowly, with a halting, back-and-forth gait.)

SONNETS TO ORPHEUS, PART TWO, XII
by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated from German by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

Want the change. Be inspired by the flame
Where everything shines as it disappears.
The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much
as the curve of the body as it turns away.


What locks itself in sameness has congealed.
Is it safer to be gray and numb?
What turns hard becomes rigid
and is easily shattered.


Pour yourself like a fountain.
Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking
finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins.


Every happiness is the child of a separation
it did not think it could survive. And Daphne,
becoming a laurel,
dares you to become the wind.

Fantastic poetry compels me to a certain stillness, like the sort of stretching pause in a conversation when it is interrupted by some stunningly beautiful music that suddenly started on the radio. Everyone stops to listen, and no matter what was being said or how urgent it was, suddenly it can wait.
I often feel like I'm gulping it, and I'm both drowning in it and starving for it.

This is the reason I write poetry.  Poetry is a bit like ham radio: it's this special skill you cultivate so as to communicate with other people who are cultivating the same skill to communicate with you.  Few non-poets actually read or enjoy poetry.  But as a poet, I find myself drowning in the beauty of someone else's work often.  Usually it's the work of someone like Rilke or Emily Dickinson, but not always. One of my classmates in my poetry workshop class wrote some things that were so beautiful that I asked if I could keep the drafts she shared.  I relished the brief spark of perfect connection between her mind and mine that is the business of poetry.

On the facing page, the author of the book included the following, taken from Jackson Pollock's headstone on Long Island:

ARTISTS AND POETS ARE THE RAW

NERVE ENDS OF HUMANITY.

BY THEMSELVES THEY CAN 

DO LITTLE TO SAVE HUMANITY.

WITHOUT THEM THERE WOULD BE

LITTLE WORTH SAVING.

(I find it fascinating how commonly we see this compulsive belief that "humanity needs saving".  No one seems to fervently believe that "humanity needs improving" or "humanity needs a little polishing".  It seems that the more we polish humanity, the more clearly we see it rotting from the inside.)

For each of the ten poems, the author, Roger Housden, has written a bit of exposition about the poem.  He highlights Rilke's assertion that if we accept constant change, even our sense of self must be subject to it, leading to a certain dismemberment.

Housden deals with the notion of dismemberment as a consequence of accepting the constant change of life.  He points out that dismemberment runs throughout world religions: the Egyptian stories about Osiris, the Tibetan chod, in which you visualize your own dismemberment, and even the Christian celebration of the Eucharist, with the pivotal phrase "This is my body, broken for you."

The whole thing made me think about how I've changed this semester.  It's been one of the hardest of my life, mostly because of the constant change.  Unlike most, this one feels like it's been a decade long.  Like a labyrinth, or the miles and miles of DNA coiled in each of my microscopic cells, the distance I've traveled over the last few months overflows the time that was meant to contain the journey.

It makes life seem nice and full, like I'm savoring every second of it.  But it also means that I feel the soreness from each and every hard day, even if I don't remember it.  Maybe I'm getting old.

  

In any case, this seems a fitting beginning of the new year.  May we simply embrace the truth, want the change, and receive the grace for each new day.  God be with you.