[MD] Terry Eagleton on Dawkin's God Delusion

[Case]

[Bo]
I don't remember your attitude regarding the MOQ, you were less than
convinced the last time we met and - right - no intelligent person can be
convinced by the current "intellectual level", but I talk from the SOL
interpretation.  

[Case]
My attitude to the MoQ is ambivalent but I think it is accurate to say I am
not in lock step with orthodox interpretations.
 
[Bo]
Jesus as an "intellectual" is one of its fallouts. There is nothing that
indicates that the Roman occupation was his grievance, rather the Mosaic Law
that was (still is) the essence of the old Semitic tradition - the Social
reality in moqspeak. And the Romans didn't bother much with him until the
Jewish high priests handed him over and the mob demanded his execution. 

[Case]
There is every reason to think that Jesus ran afoul of the Romans. First he
was executed by them and they posted a sign labeling him as the King of the
Jews. In his ministry there are his pronouncements regarding the coming of
the Kingdom of God. There is the rowdy composition of his disciples: tax
collectors, assassins', brawlers, and revolutionaries. There is the armed
conflict at the time of his arrest. There is the civil disturbance in
Jerusalem that corresponded to his conflict in the Temple. 

To say that he was not a favorite with the Temple priesthood is merely
redundant. The Temple priests served at the discretion of the Roman
occupiers and the main bitch against the priests among the population at
large was that they were little more than Roman quislings and where appoint
from lineages that were not supposed to serve as priests.

Aside from all this there is little in the historical record to indicate
that Pilate gave a rat's ass what the public thought. At one point he order
about 2000 Jews crucified and lined the road with their crosses. It is
unlikely that he gave little thought to adding one more.

On the flip side of this is Jesus's claim to have come to fulfill the law
not to overcome it. He was also reluctant to talk or provide service to
gentiles. His chief intellectual contribution was to say that the Law
written in the heart is more important than the written law.

[Bo]
Here we actually agree, Jesus the deity weren't much different from the
"father", the said revolt totally gone only the miraculous part remained.
The New Testament's budding intellectual values: Human rights, woman
emancipation and the general individual's worth were also forgotten and not
resumed until the Enlightenment.

[Case]
The arguments at the Council of Nicaea are fascinating. The whole bizarre
formulation of Jesus as both fully God and fully human stems from the church
fathers' unwillingness to face up to the logical consequence of either view.

Especially with regard to the role of women in the church, a backlash began
well before the Nicaean Council. The pseudo-Pauline epistles, most
especially Timothy I and II, were composed as a corrective for the attitude
toward women express by both Jesus and Paul. Jesus appears to have had women
in his inner circle and portions of Paul's ministry seem to have been
underwritten by wealthy woman followers.

[Bo]
Right, Christendom became a mix of Greek intellectualism and Jewish ethics.
Humankind got a (spiritual) soul unknown to the the social era. However, I
would have liked to the know what you see as examples of the said
intellectualism. 

[Case]
This is a source of ongoing curiosity for me. Much of what the early church
incorporated from the Greeks is not all that intellectual. The God-Man/Son
of God business was clearly anathema to the Jews and common to the Greeks.
Paul seems to have been familiar and sympathetic to the Greek mystery cults
and practices of the Dionysian cults are mirrored in early Christian
rituals. Certainly by the middle ages the scholastics embraced and
incorporated Aristotle and neo-Platonism. As for the earlier history of the
church I am not familiar enough with church history to say which
specifically philosophical ideas were bandied about.
   
[Bo]
The "saint/priest tension is correct, but that one is universal, the Semitic
religions are haunted by a different and worse tension, namely the
believer/infidel or fundamental/secular and some more names for this
conflict. This has nothing to the do with their respective saints or
mystics.

[Case]
Among Jews this tension began right after the death of Solomon. The
intertwining of priestly and prophetic writings is evident in the Torah. It
is overt in the books of history and the prophets in the Old Testament. The
Jewish notions of conversion by the sword are mainly evident in the period
before the Kingdom of David was established. Later, especially after the
Babylonian captivity they were rarely in a position to apply the sword.

Still you are correct one could hardly find a more striking example of Us vs
other than the "chosen people". I have no defense of conversion by coercion
in any form but is it true that Orientals are immune?

[Bo]
The saints renouncing desire and/or ascites striving for mystical
experience, their purpose is not to surrender - at least not  to a God's
will expressed as dictates about food and dress and prayer positions. Nor do
they feel the need for converting "heathens" or kill an apostate. This is
the Semitic "tradition" unknown in the East.  

[Case]
I do not know enough about the history of the East to say much about their
wars or techniques of conversion so I am happy to take you word for this.
But I doubt if conversion by the sword is unique to Semitic traditions it
was certainly common in antiquity and not unheard of in the New World.