A collection of things
A collection of things
There is a lot of discussion going on right now about who was ultimately responsible for the death of Jesus.
The discussions I've heard so far are all flawed. They have all fallen into one of three categories.
1) Those that place blame squarely with the Jews. This group likes to quote various sections of scripture. Most of it, even the church admits is anti-Semitic.
2) Those that blame the Romans with the same emotion as the first group. These people point out that Roman's would have been unlikely to take orders from the Jews and the traditional problems of the times during the holy day of Passover.
3) Those that dancing around the question giving concessions to both sides with out actually providing an answer.
The flaw in this argument is the very vocabulary used.
Only a miniscule number of Roman citizens knew Jesus was even a name, much less the name of a man, at the time of the crucifixion. Even with in Jerusalem, I'd be willing to bet that most Roman citizens knew who Jesus was.
Similarly, I'd be willing to bet that most Jews had not heard of the man at that point. His followers were not many, and would be prophets were not unordinary during this period. Even among the Jews in Jerusalem, I'd be willing to bet there may have been a lot of talk about the man who disrupted activities at the temple, but I imagine few had bothered to form an opinion at that point, with the possible exception of blind faith to those in charge of the temple.
And that is the crux. Jesus was not killed by the Jews or the Romans. He was killed by those in control. He had made it known that he meant to disrupt the status quo and as such was a potential threat to the power structure.
In this day in age where people confuse the false teachings of the Christian Right with the real teachings of Jesus, it is forgotten that this man was a revolutionary. That his teachings were in direct opposition to the power structure of the time.
And as every revolutionary knows, if you hit the system, the system hits back.
Jesus was killed by the same people who killed Malcolm, Martin, Bobby, Joe, and all the other martyred revolutionaries, those in control.
I just sent the following email to a few friends of mine.
Just stumbled across an interesting little link.http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/
I haven't had a chance to dig to deep, but from glancing around, it
looks to be as advertised. But, the fun thing is a link at the bottom.
I've been thinking now and then, over the past couple of months that I
need to pick up my studies of the historical jesus again. But, I've
been lost in exactly how to go about it. Which researchers may prove
fruitful and which won't. This is basically the problem that I had
when I put this research down. And there, at the bottom of the page is
this linkhttp://www.earlychristianwritings.com/theories.html
After I had a chance to glance through the second link, and do a quick glance on the first two writers I was struck by my reactions. The first two writers mention in the link are both members of the Jesus Seminar. A very liberal group of researchers, who have been acccused of forcing scripture to meet thier needs. Now, of course the arguement can be made that all such research is subject to this same problem. And any attempt at pure objectivity is fruitless in this search. But, what I found most interesting was my reaction to this knowledge, and my reaction to other people I have come across.
I was raised Irish Catholic. And while I do not attend services with any kind of regularity, I don't object to going with my parent's when I happen to be visiting them on Sunday morning. Over the past couple of years I have fashioned myself as a heritic of sorts. But, the degree to which this is true is suspect.
I would not consider myself orthodox, I openly question Papal authority, and have no misgivings about finding a personal relationship with god. But, at the same time, I am instincively suspicious of the Jesus Seminar. This, in and of itself is not much, since even liberal scholars are suspect of them. But, my instinctive suspect also extends to Protestant scholars. And I am instincevly accepting of John P. Meier, a Catholic priest.
A portion of this is knee jerk reaction. Catholicism is familiar to me. And I feel more comfortable in my ability to weed through Catholic research. But, I wonder how much is dogmatism in my belief structures.
I have adopted elements of other religions into the way in which I deal with the world, but if I'm honest with myself, my acctual spiritual belief structure is still very Catholic in nature.
A thought that just occured to me. How much of my reluctance to get back into historical Jesus research is fear of purchasing useless books or falling prey to well written, but dodgey theories. And how much of that reluctance, is a fear to challenge my beliefs? How much is fear at what I may find? Obviously, with this question proposed, it must now be addressed. I must now go forward and test my beliefs. But, what will I find? And how will it change things?
I've got such a backlog of things. Some are old links that I'm going to throw up here, instead of just leaving them in my inbox, which is getting crowded. The rest are things that Ali Bey's been posting to the Moorish list. I'll try and work through that and get up what I can tonight. For now though, links:
The Labadie Collection - A collection of all kinds of fringe stuff, esspecially leftist writings and images.
An article on the Cult of Hizir in Turkey
Surgical Ordnance - An article that Jesse warns is "a bit on the rose-colored side." Probably shouldn't be taken litterally.
Something I acctually found myself hunting through google one night. Copies of FBI documents concerning thier investigation of the Moorish Science Temple.
The Paradox of African-American Faith - An article about African-American Faith
Pages from some book. These pages detail the meeting between a Sudanese Missionary to the United States: Satti Majid, "Shaykh al-Islam in North America", and the Noble Drew Ali.
An interview with Robert Anton Wilson
A bit on NPR about TAZs
From Far Right To Far Left - And Farther - With Karl Hess - some article about Karl Hess written in 1970. Could be interesting.
Sabaean Mandeans hold baptism in Iraq Tiny sect fearful of future - An article about a sect in Iraq that considers John The Baptist their savior.
Our Moorish Martyr Warren Tartaglia (Walid al-Taha) - A site dedicated to Walid al-Taha, writer of The Hundred Seeds of Beirut.
Keeping The Faith - An article about Wali Uqdah, the prison Iman.
Haitians Hail the `President of Voodoo' - An article on Haiti officially reconizing Voodoo as a legitamit religion.
Scare Tactics, Why are Liberian soldiers wearing fright wigs?
Qiyamat-i Qubra in Alamut - an article about the qiyamat-i qubra.
A short biography of Gibran Khalil Gibran
An interview with Joseph Matheny.
And that's it for the links. I've still got about 30 essays to throw up here, but that will have to wait until another time. Hopefully before the end of the week.
I guess we'll start with the newest finds and work back, figuring in threads of thought as I go along.
I acctually was in the process of getting some work done today, at work no less, when the president of the company and our HR person stopped by. Thier in town for some big gala thing. And since I've never met either, I figured I'd talk to them. Nice women, and I don't regret the conversation, but little work got done when they left. Instead, I started wondering around web sites. In the process I came across an interesting little comic called, Business As Usual. It's fun, you should go read it. There isn't much, but may be there'll be more.
Something about the comic reminds me of Ein Stuck Natur. And that's another comic you should read.
Back to BAU though, Kate also gets props for attending Radford Univ. Which was the first college I went to. I only lasted three semesters and only got 15 credits out of it, but oh well. I was still there.
On the tech front, Lisa Rein has video footage of Alan Kay's presentation at the Emerging Tech Conference a few weeks ago. His presentation was broken up into three areas:
1) Pointing out how little has changed in software over the last 40 years. This was depressing. Basically, we still don't have access to software that the people at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center invented back in the 60's. People just forgot about all the cool things that PARC invented and decided it wasn't important. Well, damn them!
2) A demo of kids (around 10-11 years old) working with Small Talk. Building little systems and playing with them. The point was to teach these kids about science in a way that wasn't just memorizing facts. This was cool as hell, and instilled in me, being a systems geek, a need to get a copy of Small Talk, or Squeak, the updated version of Small Talk, running on a machine. I need to investigate that.
3) A demo of Croquet, which is Alan's new product. This looks cool as hell. And it's funny that I see this now, as I'm in the middle of reading Neuromancer. I'm not sure what this could be used for though. Not that that's a bad thing. I'm a believer in the old ethos of "invent it, then figure out what to do with it." It's just not high on my priorities of download right now. Maybe once it's in beta stage.
A few days ago I was poking around some news sites, and came across the The Religious Movements Homepage @ The Univeristy of Virginia. I really need to play around with this more, but they list Discordianism, so they get props.
And speaking of religious links, I rediscovered The Gnosis Archive after the post around the Wandering Bishops, and what a fine archive it is.
OK, that's enough for tonight.
In the History and Catechism of the Moorish Orthodox Church of America there is this odd reference to the early stages of the MOCA:
At that early stage, the M.O.C. was seen as partly Moorish and partly Eastern Orthodox, and there existed certain ties with "Errant Bishops" of the Old Catholic Church, Syrian Orthodoxy, etc.
In the 1950s some white jazz musicians and poets who held "passports" in the M.S.T. founded the Moorish Orthodox Church, which also traced its spiritual ancestry to various "Wandering Bishops" loosely affiliated with the Old Catholic Church and schisms of Syrian Orthodoxy.
Actually, I just looked around found this message that I posted to the MOCA list I'm on in response to someone else asking about the Bishops:
Actually, this goes along my own interests. Can anyone recommend any good books? I've been looking for a copy of Bishops At Large, by Peter F. Anson, which Peter Wilson sites in his essay on MST in Sacred Drift, but I'm assuming the book's now out of print (even the publisher, Faber and Faber, doesn't have a listing for the book). If anyone can recommend another book, or knows of some place where I could get a copy of Bishops At Large, I'd be grateful.
I did see this when I was looking through the MOCA list:
also, the Wandering Bishops and the autocephalous churches movement, which played a major role in the original formation of the M.O.C. (hence the term "orthodox" and our title of "Metropolitan", for example)
Crap! I just went looking for my book on Orthodox Christianity, and I couldn't find it. Where the hell did I put that thing? I checked Mircia Eliade's A History of Religious Ideas, but it isn't listed in the index of the two volumes I have. Could be in volume three. Let me get bills paid and we'll see if I can afford the third volume. Till then, I've got to track down that Orthodoxy book.
Before I post this. I looked again and found my book on Orthodox Christianity. (The Orthodox Church, by Timothy Ware) He mentions autocephalous, but only in as much as this term means self governing, and is how orthodox churches are run. There are two references to Syrian Churches. One is part of the "Church of the East" and is labeled as the "East Syrian Church." The other reference is to the Non-Chalcedonian Churches and here we have the Syrian Church of Antioch and the Syrian Church of India. Both of these groups are part of the "Oriental Churches" which split from the main body of Christianity in the fifth and sixth century.
I probably need to look into what "Syrian Orthodoxy" is. I assumed the reference was to the country, but I'm guessing now it's more an idea. By the way, Antioch appears to be on the border of modern day Turkey and Syria. Though it's not listed on the atlas I have. It's not a great atlas for these kind of things though.
So the questions for now are:
1) Who were the Wondering Bishops?
2) What was the the autocephalous churches movement?
3) What is Syrian Orthodoxy?