Mormonism as Hermetic Christianity (part 1)

I have to admit to being remarkably ignorant about the Mormon religion prior to a few weeks ago.  I had always viewed Mormonism as a legalistic branch of Christianity combined with a ridiculous story about Jesus having come to America to preach to American Indians.   For all the exotic religions from the ancient world, from the middle ages, from the more recent past, I'd explored I never looked at a faith with 6 million modern day Americans with anything more than a passing glance because I assumed there would be nothing interesting to see.   And just recently with one of those passing glances I did a double take.  I ran into an internet discussion with a bunch of religious Mormons the kind that don't know what coffee tastes like and were married by 23, using authors from History of Religions in a religious debate, the sort of authors and more importantly concepts that usually only atheists or radical theologians would cite; and the Mormons showed clear signs of having read, understood and at least in some part approving of those books.

And so I was caught off guard, so I read more and more of the discussions on that board, and saw ideas from esoteric Christianity,  what looked to me like ideas from Rosicrucianism, being used casually.  A bunch of people who all think George W. Bush was a good president, citing religious ideas that Paul Tillich might think but would figure too radical to speak?  This warranted more investigation.  And after a few weeks I've come to the conclusion that Morminism is genuinely cool.   A truly new American religion, a blend of ingredients I've never seen before.  That would be worthy of discussion in and of itself but a month ago if you would have asked me, "what would happen if a Conservative version of Helena Blavatsky had set up a mainstream church that grew to millions and thinks it's part of Evangelical Christianity"? I would have considered the question an oxymoron, not even possible enough to warrant discussion,  until I looked at Brigham Young's church.  I must admit I'm still getting over the idea of KJVonlyists who are to the left of Elizabeth Johnson on re-imaging God with Holy Mother(s).   If you are someone who likes this blog, and haven't looked into Mormonism, I'll stop you right here and say this is religion worth looking at.  It is frankly amazing that such a thing even exists much less is a church with million and millions of members, who have been in the church for 5-7 generations plus new recruits.  It is shattering many of my assumptions about what is possible.

Mormons defines itself as a close cousin of Evangelical Christianity   Evangelical Christianity defines itself first and foremost in terms of adherence to Protestant doctrines.  Protestantism defines itself based on: its definition of scripture, faith defined by creeds, its understanding of grace within a narrow band between Luther and Calvin, a creedal understanding of Christ, and a rejection of sacramental theology. All 5 of which are contradicted by Mormon theology, and contradicted not by a little bit, either.  From an evangelical standpoint 7th day Adventists, sit on the border between Christianity and heresy; Jehovah's witnesses while Christian are preaching clear cut heresies and Mormons well is just another religion.The paradox that gets beaten to death on the web is "Is Mormon Christian?"  Now the average evangelical who understands something about Mormonism usually responds with some variation of, "What are you kidding?"

Ah but... Mormonism is a very theologically tolerant religion.   It takes an open view of relationship between theology and religion, we are not saved by our knowledge of biblical doctrine.  Catholicism fought against the ancient alternative forms of Christianity with a: one God, one creed, one Bishop slogan.  And while Protestant Christianity has rejected the "one Bishop" in their mind that requires they cling all the more tightly to "one creed".   So,  is it really fair to use a evangelical standard, or can we possibly come up with some sort of neutral standard?  There wouldn't even be a question if Mormonism didn't identify heavily with Evangelical Christianity, but it does, and further culturally and linguistically there are a lot of similarities.  It would be hard to imagine someone who didn't take the ties with Evangelical Christianity serious writing an argument or an article like the Apostle's creed and the book of Mormon.   Self identification is a key criteria, so we should treat it as respectfully as possible.  As an aside, the argument about the Apostle's creed IMHO ducks the key issue, most evangelicals are willing to grant that at the time the book of Mormon was authored Joseph Smith was still essentially Christian in his religious views, its the developments after that, the beliefs that are held over and beyond those which are of at this point the largest source of conflict.  And this is evidenced by the fact that a more mainstream group than the LDS, a group that rejects the later revelations, The Community of Christ, joined the NCC in 2010 (link), without the later revelations there simply is not nearly the same degree of theological hurdles.  

So I actually have something different to say about this never ending debate; a possible compromise on the "is Mormon Christian" debate which:

1. Is historically accurate and is not an abuse of language.  
2. Is supportive of Mormon theology regarding being a restored church.  It provides some genuine historical meat to what is otherwise a vague claim, making "we are the re-established, original Christian church" plausible in a genuine historical context, capable of holding up to scrutiny and scholarship.     
3. Is respectful of the theological objections that Catholics and Protestants express towards Mormonism by openly acknowledging their "non-normative" theology.  
4. Offers a plausible theory for how the distinctive aspects of the Mormon faith developed as quickly as they did, and why Mormonism diverged from "normative" Christianity as far as it did under Brigham Young.  

What I'm proposing is that we answer the question in the affirmative, Mormonism is a form of Hermetic Christianity, a form of Christianity that coexisted in the ancient world along with Catholic Christianity, and has continued to off and on exist throughout the next two millennia.    Before getting into my argument for that answer let me first qualify by saying there are a few problems with this solution.  

1. The Mormon church is probably over ten-times the size of all the other Hermetic churches worldwide, put together.  Mainline or Evangelical Christianity are big enough that the Church of Later Day Saints could be "just another denomination" if grouped with Hermetic Christianity the Mormon church would redefine the entire group.
2. Culturally they are not a fit.  Hermetic Christianity has a 1000 year history of having essentially always been associated with political and/or sexual radicalism.  Hermetic Christian churches further have a more limited ecclesiology,  they aim to be an activity their members engage in, they make no attempt to form an inter-generational relationship guiding their lives.     
3. Because of (2) above, this doesn't address the core issue in terms of ecumenical dialogue, which is I suspect the main reason Mormons want to identify as Evangelical Christians.  The religions themselves travel in different circles.  Hermetic Christians groups in today's world along with Gnostic Christianity,   form a bridge between the left end of Liberal Christianity and Neopaganism, New Age movement, Spiritualism...  Its unlikely the people in those groups know who Al Mohler or John MacArthur even are, much less have a desire for their acceptance.  If evangelicals came in contact with Hermetic Churches, while the counter arguments would be different, the level of hostility would likely be almost equally high.  

So a fairly good case could be made that this article is irrelevant, I'm just ducking the issue.  But I think its worth a conversation as a possible compromise.   So lets start with a quick discussion about what is Hermeticism and Hermetic Christianity.  In the ancient world, Hermeticism was a branch of Egyptian paganism created after Alexander the Great, merging the cults of Hermes, the Greek messenger (writing) god, the source of hidden wisdom, and for later Greeks the Logos; and Thoth an Egyptian god, the only begotten son of Ra the high god, who was the teacher of man, the god of writing.
 The attraction for both sides was a well developed magick (we'll adopt the Hermetic convention of using magic for a form of stagecraft involving illusion and magick for ritual activities aimed at altering the material world through supernatural means) cult in each of the respective religions.   Hermeticism became an international religion, centered in Egypt, focused on creating a synthesis between Platonic philosophy and its religious offshoots with more traditional, religious forms.  To left you see pictured the Hermetic symbol, the symbol of Hermes Trismegistus,  their merged God which has the the Ankh of Thoth merged with the twin snakes  of Hermes.  For later Hellenists, Hermes Trismegistus was the Logos who had become incarnate to teach man hidden wisdoms of the high God, including the magick healing i.e. medicine.  You can see the obvious derivation with today's modern symbol for medicine, pictured to the right.  I'll won't focus on the obvious symbolism of the cross but will (link) and mention in the Coptic church even today you can see Ankh crosses, hybrids between the Ankh and the cross and these go back to the 1st century.

In many ways this was exactly the goal of Hellenistic Judaism, to create a merger between Jewish ritual and theology with Greek culture and philosophy.  This friendly alliance between Hermitics and Hellenistic Jews was strengthened with Julius Caesar's and Mark Anthony's conquest of Egypt.  Hermetics rejected Roman rule and got involved political resistance, Jews were fighting the occupation of Judea and Roman customs and laws like circumcision prohibitions; another great friendship forged based on "the enemy of my enemy".    This merger is evidence in both the literature and archeology of 1st century Judaism, its from this period that we find a wealth of Jewish magical amulets all over the ancient world using Hermetic incantations modified with Jewish / Babylonian angels rather than Egyptian / Greek names.   Jewish Hermeticism sought to reinterpret Hermes Trismegistus with the Logos, the divine word or message reinterpret as Torah (the first 5 books of the old testament), the Word of God in essentially modern usage.  Now if we consider the Gospel of Mark for a moment

• A long Jewish midrash, a religious biography of a messianic character constructed from the Septuagint.
• Miracles of healing including their wording a magical character (see for example Morton's Smith, Jesus the Magician for a long discussion of magick as a theme of Mark).  
• An adoptionist view of Jesus, in particular a description, bird and all (Mark 1:9-11), of the Hermetic magick rite for gaining divine powers.
• The idea that the God, has secrets (the Messianic secret) openly only to the select few, a motif that hadn't appeared in Judaism to this point but was common in Hermeticism.  
• A focus on baptism, common for Jewish baptismal cults.
• The Hermetic eating the god rite, eucharist, presented in a Jewish context (Mark 14:22-26).  

Hermetic Jews / proto-Christians are by far the community most likely to have authored Mark.    The same relationship that Mark has to Matthew and Luke (Mack the Knife, and biblical development) is founding underlying the Gospel of John, is a Signs Gospel which presents a list of earthly miracle worker in the Jewish community as a savior (see my post Bultmann's order for John for more on the construction of the Gospel of John).  A focused tie on the connection between magick and revelation of truth which could have emerged from a Hermetic Jewish / proto-Christian community.

In terms of the Epistles, we also run into some pretty clear evidence in Colossians 2:8-23:

• Col 2:8, Col 2:20 manipulation of matter through spirits, secret magick rituals; 
• Col 2:11 circumcision, the importance of earthly acts to control powers,  Hermeticism is not gnostic "as above is below" is the core idea of magick.  
• Col 2:16-17 special ritual holidays
• Col 2:18 angel worship, a truly distinctive part of Hermetic Judaism provides the strongest evidence for the identification
• Col 2:21-23 legalism, a focus on ritual purity for the laity.  

The opponents in Galatians, the Judaizers, with their demand for an earthly circumcision could very easily have been Hermetic proto-Christians.  Interestingly enough, Paul's own methodology, of searching through scripture for mystical revelation has a Hermetic feel but then the lack of earthly action is Gnostic.  And can view Paul, a 2nd generation Christian trying to steer the church between the two extreme of Hermeticism and proto-Gnosticism.   Corinthians provides a wonderful example where he seems to be confronted with a congregation unable to decide whether material things are of no importance (Gnosticism) or what is bound on earth is bound in heaven (Hermeticism).  We can imagine the world of Paul, confronting a Hermetic i.e. messianic congregation which has seen its earthly expectations of redemption crushed under Roman might.  Jewish / Christian Gnosticism started as a reaction against what the Jews believes was their defeated god, fake god, a god who had promised that his faithful would be redeemed and then allowed them to be humiliated and defeated.  Paul's message that it was not an earthly redemption, and far from a defeat that the cross represented a heavenly triumph against the powers and principalities would have represented an appealing message.   When reading the epistles you can hear Paul viewing early Christianity caught between Scylla and Charybdis, Paul moving the congregation away from both magical thinking, believing they could change the course of human history through supernatural means;  and at the same time fighting the utter dispair in history and this world that Gnosticism represented.  In Paul's 7 authentic epistles we can view a second generation of Hermetic Jew, his Christianity which will uphold the power of the material sacraments, codes of morality while asserting that their effects are heavenly not earthly; in effect moving his congregation from proto-Christianity to Christianity.   Jude can be seen in the same light loaded with mystical references and obscure literature while still asserting the key importance of earthly events.


Revelations is traditional apocalyptic literature, that could have been written at almost anytime.    The theology is Hermetic with an interplay between levels of heaven.  For example giving birth to a heavenly savior with a dragon cast down to represent the beasts of the earth and land.     It could very easily have been an earlier work recast with the Christian community recasting Jesus as God's earthly redeemer.  


Hebrews presents a mythical savior as a new form of priest establishing a new type of mythical priesthood, based on a new heavenly sacrifice in his heavenly sanctuary where he acts as High Priest making ineffectual earthly sacrifices.  Nope not Hermetic Judaism.  Hermetic Judaism would have been an argument that earthly sacrifices are effectual because they mimic the heavenly sacrifices of the heavenly Christ in his heavenly temple, or that the earthly ones aren't close enough to actually work.   Hebrews is also unavoidably early, as it predates the destruction of the temple, so this theory of origins is going to require a belief in at least one other strand of early Christianity.    But in the Essenes we have obvious candidates for its original authors.  And we both sides of this for James, an early version from the Dead Sea Scrolls and the later "Christianized" version which is canonical James.  And that solution of the Essenes would work for Hebrews as well, an argument for community holiness and God's deliverance over what they saw as Herod's perverse temple.     So for the purpose of believing in a unique early church we could have the Hermetic Judaism influencing the Essenes and then literature passing between those communities.

The pastoral epistles with their obvious 2nd century references, as well as most of the catholic epistles belong to a later phase; a community done migrating from Judaism, that has concerns over governance.  The two main strands of Q: Greek cynical philosophy and Jewish apocalyptic traditions are not part of Hermetic Judaism.  Matthew's theology would not have come from this group, though again the Essenes would work.    Similarly Luke/Acts (and even the earlier form of Luke, The Gospel of the Lord) is not Hermetic Jewish either but I'd date this well in 2nd century.  The reworking Signs into John, is hard to date with confidence but we can be assured its later than most other works in the New Testament. Hence,  those remaining books present no contradiction to the theory.

Hermetic Judaism was even without any other influence already a fairly complete proto-Christianity.   It could very well have represented the original church, the church that authored most of the bible.  A plausible source for the sort of group a primitive Christianity could initially have emerged from.  This sort of naturalistic framework for viewing the bible is fully in accord with Mormon tradition:

“The Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the Bible from which translations have been made, are evidently very much corrupted,…the learned are under the necessity of translating from such mutilated, imperfect, and, in very many instances, contradictory copies as still exist. This uncertainty, combined with the imperfections of uninspired translators, renders the Bibles of all languages, at the present day, emphatically the words of men, intead of the pure word of God.” (Pratt, Spiritual Gifts) 

We will stop here and take up the rest of the argument in the 2nd half.

• What happened to pagan Hermeticism and its collapse into Catholic Christianity, Hermes Christianus.    
• Hermetic Christianity, its disappearance from the ancient world and its rebirth as a religion of European aristocrats and religious radicals.  
• How a religion of European aristocrats might have made contact, transformed and been reborn in a middle / lower class rural American sect run by Brigham Young.   

___________

See also:

• part2 and part3 of this series
• The ideas about Hermetic Christianity and its tie to Christian origins were first proposed by Richard Reitzenstein in Poimandres: Studien zur Griechisch-ägyptischen und frühchristlichen which unfortunately has never been translated.   A good summary is found in chapter 8 of Pagan Regeneration, by Harold R. Willoughby.  Also a more modern summary from lecture notes one by Vernon Robbins.  
• Wikipedia has a nice summary / introduction to magic from that period.
• The idea that early Christians didn't in fact believe that the gospels were relating events in Palestine but viewed them mythically, like the stories of hercules, is extensively argued elsewhere.  A fairly good treatment which examines references in depth is Earl Doherty's site.  
• Rediscovering Ancient Christianity by C Wilfred Griggs, a historically accurate approach from BYU agreeing overall with the Walter Bauer style analysis above.  The article itself even goes further in addressing theorists like David Strauss who made strong negative claims about the historicity of the bible texts.  
• Fair LDS page on the diversity of early Christianity. 
• Evangelical analysis of the Colossian Heresy: part1, part2, part3

75 bible sayings

Terrific little list from http://www.av1611.org/kjv/fight.html of expressions that came from the KJV

1. Genesis 4:2-5: can't get blood from a turnip
2. Genesis 7: don't miss the boat
3. Genesis 11:7-9: babbling
4. Genesis 15:5: teller
5. Genesis 43:34: mess (of food)
6. Exodus 19:16-18: holy smoke
7. Exodus 28:42: britches
8. Exodus 32:8: holy cow
9. Leviticus 2:14: roast ears
10. Leviticus 13:10: the quick (raw flesh)
11. Leviticus 14:5-6: running water
12. Leviticus 16:8: scapegoat
13. Leviticus 25:10: Liberty Bell
14. Numbers 21:5: light bread
15. Numbers 35:2-5: suburb
16. Deuteronomy 2:14: wasted him
17. Deuteronomy 24:5: cheer up
18. Deuteronomy 32:10: apple of his eye
19. Judges 5:20: star wars
20. Judges 7:5-12: under dog
21. Judges 8:16: teach a lesson
22. Judges 17:10: calling a priest father
23. I Samuel 14:12: I'll show you a thing or two
24. I Samuel 20:40: artillery
25. I Samuel 25:37: petrified
26. II Samuel 19:18: ferry boat
27. I Kings 3:7: don't know if he's coming or going
28. I Kings 14:3: cracklins
29. I Kings 14:6: that's heavy
30. I Kings 21:19-23: she's gone to the dogs
31. II Chronicles 9:6: you haven't heard half of it
32. II Chronicles 30:6: postman
33. Nehemiah 13:11: set them in their place
34. Esther 7:9: he hung himself
35. Job 11:16: It's water under the bridge
36. Job 20:6: he has his head in the clouds
37. Psalm 4:8: lay me down to sleep
38. Psalm 19:3-4: he gave me a line
39. Psalm 37:13: his day is coming
40. Psalm 58:8: pass away (dying)
41. Psalm 64:3-4: shoot off your mouth
42. Psalm 78:25: angel's food cake
43. Psalm 141:10: give him enough rope and he'll hang himself
44. Proverbs 7:22: dumb as an ox
45. Proverbs 13:24: spare the rod, spoil the child
46. Proverbs 18:6: he is asking for it
47. Proverbs 24:16: can't keep a good man down
48. Proverbs 25:14: full of hot air
49. Proverbs 30:30: king of beasts
50. Ecclesiastes 10:19: money talks
51. Ecclesiastes 10:20: a little bird told me
52. Song Solomon 2:5: lovesick
53. Isaiah 52:8: see eye to eye
54. Jeremiah 23:25: I have a dream (MLK, Jr)
55. Ezekiel 26:9: engines
56. Ezekiel 38:9: desert storm or storm troopers
57. Daniel 3:21: hose (leg wear)
58. Daniel 8:25: foreign policy
59. Daniel 11:38: the force be with you (star wars)
60. Hosea 7:8: half-baked
61. Jonah 4:10-11: can't tell left from right
62. Zephaniah 3:8-9: United Nations Assembly
63. Matthew 25:1-10: burning the midnight oil
64. Matthew 25:33: right or left side of an issue
65. Matthew 27:46: for crying out loud
66. Mark 5:13: hog wild
67. Luke 11:46: won't lift a finger to help
68. Luke 15:17: he came to himself
69. Romans 2:23: breaking the law
70. Philippians 3:2: beware of dog
71. Colossians 2:14: they nailed him
72. I John 5:11-13: get a life
73. Revelation 6:8: hell on earth
74. Revelation 16:13: a frog in my throat
75. Revelation 20:15: go jump in the lake

Don't reassure me, empower me

Terrific line I ran across today which of course applies more broadly:

I make my peace with the LDS Church’s institutional sexism every day, every week, because I believe that this is where God called me to be. I’ve also been very lucky to have local leaders who understand some of the challenges that women face in the Church and try to do what they can to encourage progress. 

However, here’s the thing: no man gets the right to reassure me that I’m his equal when every single outward sign of how the Church is run tells a different story. 

Salt Lake City leaders, here’s a request: Stop telling me I’m incredible, and start giving me responsibility and authority befitting an adult and not a child. Stop standing up each Mother’s Day to wax on about how women are fantastically spiritual and start taking a hard look at the institutional sexism that repeatedly devalues women. (read the full article)

Objective measure of translation accuracy

So I've had this idea for an accuracy test between bibles.    The idea was to pick verses each of which has a different kind of complication and see how all the various bibles handle it.  The complications and scoring is is thought for thought not word for word, but at the same time highly detailed so it should be fair between formal, dynamic translations and hopefully going further out in either direction.  Score the various bibles form 1-5, with 2 being the "wrong answer" 4 being the "right answer" and 1 and 5 being additional penalties and bonus, and 3 being 1/2 credit.      I'm going to score both translations and study bibles on how well they handle this, because there may be (and probably will be) differences between study bibles and some translation have excellent study bibles while other's don't and availability of good quality notes matters.    I was going to do NT only so I can include a lot of bibles like The Voice, The Source, Gaus which don't usually get rated.    I also intend to include bibles from non-Protestant groups: Catholic bibles, New World Translation (Jehovah's witnesses), Clear Word (Adventist)...

And hopefully with time:

a)  Expand out to more translations
b)  Expand out to more tricky aspects
c)  Maybe move to a more random sample 3 of each type of issue

The idea being this gives something of an objective measure of "accuracy".  Here are the types of issues and corresponding verses I was thinking about:

1 Corinthians 2:6-10  dual meaning of archons of the aion, as both heavenly demons manipulating the earth, ephemeral powers  and their earthly representatives, "princes of this age".  Most bibles just have this as earthly.

2 = earthly
4 = heavenly, both or ambiguos.
5 = captures the relationship between both.

2 Corinthians 12:2 "third heaven" Venus translation vs transculturation covers this one.  Frequently bibles use "heaven" or "with God" and God simply doesn't live on the 3rd heaven.

1 = With God
2 = Heaven
4 = 3rd Heaven
5 = 3rd Heaven with an explanation of what the the term means.

Romans 6:8 (tense complexity and the Greek notion of time) (Bible translation: Ebonics and the aorist tense)
This is a tricky passage since the tenses are hard, particularly hard in standard English.  This is a key verse of great theological importance that is tough to translate, and because it is tough to translate people often just change the underlying theology.   Moreover the Greek notion of timelessness isn't really part of American / Christian culture so there is a temptation to consider what Paul is considering an act that takes place in eternity to have taken place at a simple point in the past.

2 = Simple past tense.
4 = Captures the aorist / continuing action of death in some way.
5 = Capturing the notion of an eternal act in a mythic realm rather than an act in the human realm, i.e. capturing the middle platonism of the original.

Romans 11:36 / Romans 12:2 (lack of concordance across chapter boundaries)
This is a tricky pair of verses because aion is frequently translated "world" or "age" depending on context.   Normally bibles are concordant with aion within a single paragraph or idea because otherwise it converts Paul into speaking gibberish.  But... this pair happens on a chapter boundary so translators often miss it.  Of course chapter markers weren't added until centuries later so this split is part of our tradition not part of the original.

2 = Using world & age without treating this like a single thought.
4 = Using the same word.
5 = Doing something creative so it works in context.

1 Timothy 6:20 (de-historical ideology over accuracy).  This verse is a great test because in it "Paul" makes reference to a 2nd century Christian book called the Antitheses, that the author of Timothy is hostile to.    Generally conservative translations will try and obscure this issue so the verse makes no sense, because they don't want to undermine Pauline authorship.  Liberal translators are quite often not any better.    The word Antithesis means literally Oppositions, but in this case it is a proper noun.  So a correct translation is something like: “O, Timothy, guard the precious deposit recoiling from profane and empty jabbering and the Antitheses (Oppositions or Contradictions in English) of the falsely labeled ‘gnosis’ for some who profess it have shot wide of the faith ”

2 = gibberish, meaningless comment like translating "opposition" lower case without any context.
4 = Right idea
5 = Antitheses capitalized or any explanation of what "Paul" (the author(s) of Timothy) is talking about here.

Romans 16:7 (Sexism over accuracy)  This verse is often translated so as not to have a woman called an apostle even though unequivocally that's what Paul is doing.  Here is a link to a meta article on BBB: http://englishbibles.blogspot.com/2006/11/junia-apostle-index.html )

2 = Cop-out, either making Junia male or dropping apostle
3 = Junia is an apostle but not highlighting Junia is a woman's name.
4 = Junia is a female apostle
5 = Discussion of this drawing attention and why there is resistance.

Galatians 5:6 (Protestant Orthodox corruption) this verse should be faith working through love.  But quite often translators want to duck any hint of salvation through work and so change this to "faith expressing itself through love" so as not to offend.  J.D. Kirk has a funny short article on this verse: Boo… Theologically Manipulated Translation. Boo…

2 = Non work
4 = Faith working through love

Mark 1:41 (proper footnoting) This is a simple verse where the textual information is split.   The reading found in almost the entire NT ms tradition is σπλαγχνισθείς (splancnisqei", “moved with compassion”). Codex Bezae (D), {1358}, and a few Latin mss (a ff2 r1*) here read ὀργισθείς (ojrgisqei", “moved with anger”). It is more difficult to account for a change from “moved with compassion” to “moved with anger” than it is for a copyist to soften “moved with anger” to “moved with compassion,” making the decision quite difficult.   Given a split original with experts cleanly divided on both sides:

2 = one side only
4 = both options

So what do you all think of the idea of objectively measure of accuracy?  Do you like the list?  Anything I should add or remove?   Most importantly does this list meet the fairness criteria?

100 year predictions of the biblical landscape

So I figured a fun topic is what will bibles look like in 100 years. I invite anyone who wants to crack out their crystal ball to give it a shot. Here are my predictions.

 I think the idea that a bible should be “general purpose” will die in the next generation.   This in my mind is a legacy of the KJV pre Living Bible / Good News Bible tradition where the same bible was used for liturgy, study, devotion.  Translations will stop aiming to be all things to all people and instead will focus on a niche like most products do in America.  The KJV may very well survive for “high liturgy” like funerals, being treated like Shakespeare or the Old Latin liturgy of the Catholic church.  Study bibles, will no longer be based on liturgical bibles and thus can do the obvious thing of forking off both a literal and a dynamic translation marked up with notes.  Thus they will be explicating the text using a dual strategy having a literal translation at least as much so as the NASB and possibly more like a good interlinear and a profoundly dynamic translation capturing the meaning of the Greek. The concern with preserving traditional phrasing will be gone since these bibles will be made exclusively for study.   Churches will use liturgical bibles designed to be understood best when read out-loud, translation like the Voice and highly poetical bibles for liturgical functions.  The pew bible will be one of these read out-loud bibles.  

I think the fact that evangelicals, including the most conservative with the ESV, have adopted the UBS/NA text is a fundamental shift in their relationship with the bible. Evangelicals today read bibles with “some texts contain X while others say Y", or "while the majority of the Greek texts say X the Syriac / Latin says Y”, etc…. In other words a view of translation has emerged which says:

1. The actual originals are unknown, what you are reading is an estimate.
2. The act of compilation is active not passive
3. The act of translation induces inevitable distortion in meaning.

That’s not a small thing. Evangelicals are undergoing what liberals did in the mid 19th century, but while liberals were having to follow a trail blazed first by radicals Evangelicals will be following the trail blazed by large institutional mainline Christianity, a much wider trail.  Evangelical Christianity is fundamentally (no pun intended) about the bible, the gospel and being born again.   Evangelicals have always focused heavily on bible study, the popularity of study bibles today which is far beyond what it was a generation ago. With computerization the amount of information in the tools used for lay study is exploding.  I think these 2 trends merge and the study bibles of 100 years are loaded with lower criticism and textual variants, made much simpler since study bibles will be computerized interfaces and not books.

On the liberal side, I think this adaption of lower criticism by the right is going to push them further to the left over the next 50 years.  Liberal bibles today are still very conservative.  I've written elsewhere on this blog how delightful it was to read a translation of John in Bultmann’s order.  Given how easy it is for a computerized book to have multiple arrangements I think this transition, a switch to go back and forth will become common.  And once it happens for John we might see arrangements in other books, like Corinthians with Schmithal's decomposition.  For the Synoptic Gospels,  given how well know Q and the documentary hypothesis is, I think we'll see the Q material clearly delineated and since Q is now such a common term possibly broken out further according to the internal structure of Q.    So while conservative bibles will incorporate lower criticism, liberal bibles will incorporate higher criticism.

This shift left by the mainstream churches will force texts teams to begin to assemble more comprehensive documentary break downs, i.e. mainstream biblical scholarship / divinity schools to go in its natural direction towards where Religious Studies professors are today.  So in terms of the UBS/NA40 (or whatever it is called) the Greek (and maybe even the Hebrew ) will present a tree view of the origins of the text (see Mack the Knife and biblical development). The books will show trees of descent, you will be able to track lines as they evolved in the 5th century from a host of sources. For example the UBS/NA Luke will clearly show what came from Ur-Lukas (Gospel of the Lord), which came from later Q additions or refinements from Matthew, which came from Mark and which came from reading the epistles back into the gospels.

As an aside, of course if divinity scholar have moved to where Religious Studies professors are today, its hard to know where these scholars will be 100 years from now.  But if the last generation is any hint I imagine they will be reconstructing the sects that gave birth to Christianity and by then people will have a fairly thorough timeline of Christianity's parents, its birth and its childhood.

Getting back to bibles, I think the debate on the canon will be fiery in 100 years. In the last 15 years we’ve started to see several bibles that are arguing for changes to the canon. Today almost no evangelical believes that Hebrews is “Paul’s epistle to the Hebrews” and it is becoming acceptable to question the authorship of the Pastoral Epistles even within conservative circles. The counter evidence is just too strong, in the same way that evolution was absolutely rejected in 1850 and considered the norm in Evangelical circles in by 1980; I believe the political nature of the canon will be mainstream.   So once 100 now the idea that the canon is essentially political in nature not religious is mainstream the big theological question will be how to respond. It took the first 200 years of the reformation for evangelicals to admit that the corrupt theology of the 16th century church really went all the way back to the 5th century and that revolution not reformation was the goal.

Today the fringe view that evangelical Christianity is free to construct their own canon rejecting the Catholic canon will be a well represented minority view. So put me down for Gospel of Thomas in at least one mainstream translation by then.    The Jesus Seminar's 5 Gospels included it in 1996 and  John Henson's Good as New which was directed at liberals in Great Britain included it in 2004 so this prediction, it wouldn't shock me if it were fulfilled by 2030, other bibles will have followed suit by 2070 though I believe in 2111 Evangelical bibles will retain their current canon.  But the debate on canon once opened will be raging, and this change will open the door to other revisions, though I'm unsure what specifically people will want since today they consider the canon closed.

So feel free to comment on my 100 year predictions or go for it and give your own.

Sharper Iron on voting for excommunication

A few weeks back Sharper Iron, an IFB blog, posted an article entitled Should Congregations Vote to Discipline? The details on the case are left very vague but the procedural problems were not.  A highly respected member of the church, seen as an elder / leader was accused of a offense and under went the first 2 phases of Matthew 18, an individual confrontation and then 2-3 others confirming it.  The case was brought before the pastor who found the evidence sufficient and the matter was brought before the congregation.  They did not believe the evidence to be sufficient to warrant excommunication and voted to retain the leader.  The pastor seeing this as a lack of trust decided to leave his position and found a church plant.   Ted Bigelow wrote the article above criticizing the congregation for the apparent reason of engaging in a broader debate.

Normally I'd answer Pastor Bigelow at the blog he wrote the post on but Sharper Iron is a closed blog.  I always like to notify people when I mention them here to give them a chance to respond.  I won't be able to notify Sharper Iron, so if anyone reading this is a member please post in my name a notification in the interests of fairness.  I'll try and notify Pastor Bigelow right after authoring this.

For Pastor Bigelow the structure of discipline is:
Step 1: Individual confrontation
Step 2: 2-3 others confront and determine if the evidence is true and certain, i.e. an inquest
Step 3: The 2-3 others go to church leadership to have their inquest confirmed
Step 4: Leadership informs the congregation to carry out discipline.

What he is arguing against is:
Step 4': The congregation votes on the excommunication via. evaluation of the evidence.

And he is absolutely correct that if the inquest is sufficient then this is a valid process.  But this structure where the inquest occurs in Step 2, rather than Step 2 is evidence gathering and evidence evaluation occurs in Step 3 puts tremendous stain on the 2 or 3 others.  Naive laity, often chosen for their closeness to the principles, without leadership oversight are being asked to conduct a full gathering of evidence.   That's a lot to ask.  And that's why typically Step 2 plays the role of an indictment and Step 3 is a full on trial, where evidence is gathered in both phases.

And in this case, the structural problems that Pastor Bigelow was arguing for became evident.  The pastor of the church in question found the Step 2 evidence convincing even thought he accused was still pleading not guilty and when he advanced it to Step 4 the holes in analysis of evidence became evident.  That is evidentially the congregation found the process wanting.  It appears from the article that the congregation determined that the Step 3 verification of the evidence collected in Step 2 did not meet their standards and they thus rightly refused to carry out sentence.  The pastor in this case was being rebuked for dereliction in his duty, during his Step 3 confirmation.  And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that rebuke, it sounds deserved.  He probably should have asked the congregation for permission to return to a more formal Step 3 process rather than resign in a huff.

Pastor Bigelow focus in the article is arguing that evidence evaluation should not be occurring during Step 4, because the information is so detailed.  And he is absolutely correct, the congregation should not be confronted with detailed conflicting evidence that they have to evaluate.  Rather what they should be doing is evaluating the findings and process that occurred in Step 3.  In other words, evaluating the trial.

And what it appears the trial consisted of was Pastor heard from the witnesses, decided the accused was lying and moved on.  There is obviously not enough detail to evaluate the information provided in this anecdote, but what I see from the anecdote is the 4 step process working exactly as intended; in this case Step 4 preventing an abuse that occurred in Step 3.   Which from the description provided sounds very much like the congregation doing their duty.

Pastor Bigelow's response,  the rest of the article, is an apology for a policy that the 2 or 3 others can simply never be questioned because that is questioning their judgement, "But a careful reading of Matthew 18:17 shows that the church is not called to a higher authority—that is, to judge the person’s guilt or innocence. Instead, the Lord calls the church to submit to the prior judgment of the two or three witnesses since they have “established the evidence...The Lord Himself placed the determinative authority of church discipline in the judgment of the two or three. He tasks them, and not the church, with the responsibility to prove unrepentant sin in Matthew 18:16.”  

The entire congregation is duty bound to fall in line excommunicate the accused based on a process they found wanting.  Given this is a fundamentalist board, this involves secondary separation so the effect of the excommunication is not just cast out the member, but to cast anyone who dares associate with the member since such a person isn't recognizing their non Christian status.    And that's assuming the congregation doesn't practice tertiary separation, i.e. separating from someone who refuses to separate from someone associated with the accused).

Given the extent of that penalty the evidence and process requirements should be simply staggering.  The idea that 2 or 3 semi-random people should be empowered to conduct the investigation with essentially no meaningful oversight is beyond irresponsible.  Matthew 18 outlines a 4 step process because the church carries the sentence and thus the church is going to be collectively held responsible for this judgement.  They are the ones in weeks, years and possibly decades to come that will need to defend these finding, defend this evidence, defend this process.    The Catholic church, centuries later is still called upon to defends its actions with respect to Galileo and Luther.  A strong case for a discipline process where the entire congregation is not involved in the details can be made.  But it is the duty of the church collectively to evaluate actions that can permanently damage the church, and excommunication is one of those actions.  I did two case studies for people who would like examples of less famous cases than Luther or Galileo (Anne Le Fert, Gresham Machen);   but the last 60 years of Fundamentalism I think work as an excellent as well.  

I think there is a genuine lack of understand of the importance of excommunication.  Once an excommunication happens the church is going to be asking others to join them in "calling for repentance" from an accused person who is going to deny the facts of the case; which means far from having to defend the facts to the congregation the church is quite likely going to have to defend the facts to world.  He's being cast out of the congregation and being publicly identified as non-Christian by the Church.  The church has to vote because the church is passing judgement.

I wrote a post a few years back on rules for due process.  I think they make it clear how much leadership needs to be involved in an excommunication and how much "dotting the i's and crossing the t's is required".  The bible establishes a standard that no evidence can be considered without multiple witnesses.  It does not establish a standard that 2 to 3 people can bind the church and force it take action. Thankfully though the comment section at Sharper Iron mainly agrees that Pastor Bigelow's process is dangerous and unbiblical.

Now the reason I say there is confusion is when Pastor Bigelow then compounds the entire thing, arguing that anyone who expresses any disagreement with the 2 or 3 is themselves guilty of serious sin, "Sadly, men’s ways can get involved in these matters and really make a mess of things. For example, congregational voting in the case of an unrepentant member could create a serious breach of faith with Christ. What if a church decides to discipline out an impenitent member by vote, but some in the church vote not to remove him? Those who vote not to remove the unrepentant member have sinned against the Lord by establishing their own verdict of innocence that opposes what the Lord already ratified."  

This seems to confuse excommunication with anathematization.  Excommunication is to declare someone no longer publicly part of the church.  Anathematization is to definitely declare that the person is damned.  Protestants generally do not believe churches are capable of anathematizing someone which is why lines like "what the Lord already ratified" seems to indicate Pastor Bigelow believes his church is in fact anathematizing and not simply excommunicating.   If he does comment here I think this is potentially the most interesting topic though it wasn't raised on Sharper Iron at all.  I suspect because the people on Sharper Iron are protestants and so simply reading excommunication even when Pastor Bigelow uses language consistent with anathematization.  (Here is a  more detailed post on the distinction).

As far as I know Pastor Bigelow is not a national figure, he just happened to be posting an article to a heavily read website.  So as much as possible I'd like to keep this away from the specifics of Grace Church of Hartford, unless he or an elder from Grace bring this up in the comments section.  

Sco v. IBM, what happens to a political case

The "save Amanda Knox" cause that has recently consumed this blog, is undergoing a shift.  Initially the core group standing behind Amanda Knox were people who knew her.  People who simply couldn't conceive of her being the sort of person Mignini described.  People who paid their own airfare to testify in her trial.   Then a small group of people examined the evidence and found it wanting.  So while there was publicity, it was mostly directed in the early days by Mignini towards villifying Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito so as to generate false statements (see Amanda Knox and prosecutorial abuse for more on this).   As the cause is broadening out to a few thousand people, its beginning to look more like a small political movement. Fewer and fewer people involved knew Amanda or any of the main parties involved personally.

So what we have here is a structure: a core group of people involved in the formal legal case, surrounded by a web support group who are gathering "evidence" in parallel with the actual trial, surrounded by a broader political movement. There are lots of criminal cases with the broader political movement. There are lots of political cases with a web based investigation but no broad political support. This triple is rare. And the best analogy is a civil suit that occurred recently SCO v. IBM that I was involved with in much the same way as this case.  And the point of this post is to examine this earlier case for what is instructive about it.

SCO was a market leader in x86 (PC) based Unixes during the 1980s  and 90s, and arguably along with Microsoft one of the few companies that believed there was money in the operating system's business as opposed to operating systems being a lost liter for selling hardware.     As Linux came in they moved onto more of a legacy support role and eventually saw their value eroded, eventually being merging with a Unix company (see Caldera OpenLinux on wikipedia for more details).

The public controversy started when the SCO Group's CEO, Darl McBride, initiated a media campaign arguing that the Linux kernel contained "hundreds of lines" of code from SCO's version of UNIX, and that SCO would reveal the code to other companies under NDA in July.  The Linux development process is public, and the kernel team has always been aggressive in attempting to ensure compliance with copyright law.  The SCO code copyright violations, if they existed most likely were in the IPX module which had been funded by Caldera, the predecessor to the SCO group.  And so this media campaign led to public outrage by a small group of people who were involved with Linux.  But this outrage quickly moved onto the broader community of people involved in the Linux community.  In much the same way that Mignini's media leaks to British and Italian tabloids originally offended just Amanda's family and friends but later generated the public interest in Seattle regarding Amanda Knox.

With a high level of public interest the initial filing in their lawsuit against IBM was heavily scrutinized.  I was typical in noticing dozens of incorrect and false statement.    I caught a lot of statements about the history of SCO, which I had been a fan of during the early 1990s, which were false.    There were also provably false statements about the history of Linux.   So in the discussions on the case I started raising these points.  And this was nothing more than internet blather.  What was different in this case, than so many others was I wasn't alone.  Dozens of people were doing the same thing.  And very quickly a site, Groklaw, was set up which organized this counter information.  Playing much the same role as Injustice in Perugia and Friends of Amanda do for the Knox case.  A central collection of information about the case as if the broader public had a vote.

Its hard to give examples on a general purpose blog since: most of the readers don't know what an operating system is, Linux / SCO has to do with operating systems kernels and the debates about things like IPX have to do with kernel libraries.  So I'll pick an example, which while trite gives an example of how misleading and dishonest the entire filling was.  Point 75, reads (points are mine)

The name "Linux" is commonly understood in the computing industry to be a combination of the word "UNIX" (referring to the UNIX operating system) and the name "Linus." The name "Linus" was taken from the person who introduced Linux to the computing world, Linux Torvalds.

Which of course is false in a whole bunch of ways. The name of the original programmer was Linus Torvalds, not Linux Torvalds. His name for the system was Freax which was a combination of Free, Freak and X. The name "Linix" (not a typo) was Ari Lemmke's abbreviation of "Linus' Minix".  Ari ran the site where Linux was first uploaded and first distributed from.    Minix was a reference to Andrew S. Tanenbaum  Operating system he wrote as a companion to his standard text, Operating Systems: Design and Implementation (link is to the late 1980s version, current is here).

And these details are important in context.  The point of 75 was to argue that even the name Linux is evidence for their theory of the derivation of Linux  While in reality the origin of the name shows the opposite.  The reference to Minix shows that the early version of the code came from the educational / academic community and not the commercial community, product lines with the AT&T code.      As an aside, the name Linux was a failed attempt at unifying the pronunciation using Linus name. American's were pronouncing Linix (Linn-ks) rather than 'Lee-nuks' (Len-uxs) and since Linus pronounces his name 'Lee-nus' the assumption was Linux would be pronounced that way; however Americans pronounce Linus as 'lye-nus' and Lye-nuks was the natural connection which also wasn't right and just added to the confusion.

So again while that point may sound nitpicky, and it is, this is meant to be an example that doesn't require background of how wrong SCO was on its many many points.   And there were hundreds of these.  All like the Harry Potter book, the blood on the knife, the bloody footprints... evidence that simply didn't exist.  And just as guilters today in the Knox case encourage everyone to ignore the specific facts that virtually ever piece of evidence that is not irrelevant has been refuted, SCO's defenders encouraged the people hearing about these nonsensical claims to focus on the big picture.   But of course the big picture was just an amalgamation of innuendo.   But unlike in the Knox case the judiciary didn't feel it appropriate to create their own theories from SCO's claims, filling in the blanks with "it is possible and in fact probable".   Rather they focused on the evidence as presented by the plaintiff:

Viewed against the backdrop of SCO's plethora of public statements concerning IBM's and others' infringement of SCO's purported copyrights to the UNIX software, it is astonishing that SCO has not offered any competent evidence to create a disputed fact regarding whether IBM has infringed SCO's alleged copyrights through IBM's Linux activities.

The interest and controversy, fed by these sites continued to build.  Journalists covering these sorts of things, typically rewrite a press release throw in a line or two of their own and move on after a few hours.  For serious cases of course everything needs to be carefully fact checked, reputations can be made or lost based on how evidence was handled.  And journalists soon found that this case was not going to be treated the same way as a minor lawsuit.    The level of controversy and heat, was more like writing about the Israeli / Palestinian crisis or a major political case.  There were expected to check and double check every line they wrote.  Years later journalists faced criticism for what they had written in SCO v. IBM; and almost all who had done little more than regurgitate press releases had to write detailed apology / retractions admitting it, to maintain their credibility.

But journalists were not the only ones effected.  The legal system itself was substantially influenced.  They were people in IBM that originally been inclined to settle cheaply.  The PR campaign and the community reaction to the SCO PR campaign put those ideas to rest.  IBM knew the community reaction to anything short of total victory would be devastatingly negative publicity.  Conversely the ongoing case was a net positive in terms of marketing, IBM's got to be the good guys among a large chunk of their potential customer base all for the cost of a minor lawsuit, SCO's PR campaign backfired.  And again the analogy of Mignini's original vilification campaign leading to a dozen books and at least 3 movies works well in this analogy.

And as the case continued the people involved who were deposing themselves to assist IBM were not secondary players like myself but primaries.  For example the project manager who had negotiated parts of the project Monterey contract for SCO with IBM came forward to contradict SCO's claims about what their intent had been at the time.  The estate of John Lions, whom both sides knew had died of old age, came forward publicly to forward to contradict SCO's claims, and provide evidence to IBM about having gotten parts of Lions' Commentary on UNIX from AT&T that Lions hadn't.  IBM's lawyers had the effect of an infinite investigative budget.   Even SCO admitted how effective Groklaw was and tried to create a connection with IBM to put an end to their activities, which failed.

In terms of the Judges, most couldn't believe that this "BS lawsuit" was the case they were going to be famous for.  None had experienced this level of public scrutiny where every motion was discussed publicly and in detail.  It caused them to go more slowly and more carefully.  It is my hope that the publicity for the Knox case similarly effects the Italian judges.  The Italian judiciary is being attacked from the right within Italy, from the British with the EU it doesn't need to further alienate America where  Italy has consistently taken the position that justice must meet international standards and shouldn't be a one country affair, (see Italy the EU and the international standards of justice).

Finally business partners and contributors to the lawsuit like like Yarro, Microsoft and Sun were affected.   Negative PR for Linux had been a boon for Microsoft and Sun.  Positive PR for SCO had been a boon for Yarro.  But once this case became really hot everyone backed off.  Microsoft while seen as unavoidably hostile to Linux needed to avoid being truly detested the way SCO was.  SUN wanted credibility in the open source world.  Conversely people on the other side like Novell and IBM who had often been mixed earned a lot street cred by being on the side of the angels.  Perguia was shocked when Seattle rejected Perugia park.  Rocco Girlanda has a US reputation now, and contacts with average Americans.

While the Knox case is not nearly as big as the SCO v. IBM case, I do think its an instructive example.

Amanda Knox: Murder On Trial In Italy

Its been interesting the last day or two reading the comments about this movie with apparently both the innocentisti and the colpevolisti thinking the movie is going to harm their cause. I've been rather confident almost from the start on this one that's its going to be friendly to Amanda. I don't have any kind of insider information here but what I've seen so far has been very promising.

First, lets start with the director Robert Dornhelm. He did a bunch of light fare in the late 1970's and all of the 1980s. In 1989, in the last days of the Ceausescu regime, a childhood friend of his, Dominic Paraschiv was shot.  The doctor misidentified him, falsely accused of being involved in a massacre. The doctor being a member of the anti-communists tied him to a bed, posted a guard to let him die from his gunshot wound.  As evidence mounted that he had the wrong man, the doctor stood by his original theory rather than admit the mistake.  As the story broke, the international media was still in a hope and glory phase with the overthrow and no one wanted to carry story about a stone cold murder due to judicial incompetence. Dornhelm wrote a movie in tribute to his friend,  and does a fantastic job in showing the banality of a the state killing Parashiv and how the media and the society all conspired in acts they would later regret. The analogy Parachiv / Knox, Timisoara massacre / Kercher murder, Clara Weber (the journalist who proved Parachiv was innocent) / Edda Mellas, Romanian anti-Communists / Italian Police, Doctor who originally misidentified Parachiv and lets him die / Mignini, the International Press / International Press is crystal clear.  I can't read his mind, but perhaps, hopefully, Dornhelm hopes to do for Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito what he was too late to do for Parachiv.  I hope that Dornhelm sees that instead of another eulogy / tribute movie this time he will not let Mignini kill pull off his murder to cover his own mistake, this time he will get there before Parachiv dies.

But without question ater the death of Parachiv, Dornhelm is not the same man.  The light comedies are gone.  He makes the tribute movie to his friend.  His very next movie is the story of Marina Oswald, Lee Harvey Oswald's widow.  That movie takes a conspiratorial view and is sympathetic to Oswald seeing Lee Harvey and Marina as pawns in a broader conspiracy.    Over the next few years he does movies about Anne Frank, Spartacus; both victims of state violence, both tried and both guilty. He then does a movie about Michelle Brown.  She was an early victim of identity theft.   Her thief stole $50,000 in her name; she is accused and the authorities take a bad situation and make it worse.  Eventually she becomes a leader in the credit protection acts but only after the US Senate acts, the police were none too helpful.    I don't know Dornhelm's work too well, but I do not see a guy who is going to blithely assume that because the Italian police say something its true.

Next lets move onto Hayden Panettiere who has indicated she played Amanda as innocent.  While she's not sure about the facts of the case herself and sees the facts as balanced,  she is sure that Amanda Knox is no threat to society, never had malicious intent.  She also doesn't believe Amanda got a fair trial (link to one interview).  Marcia Gay Harden who plays Edda Mellas is appalled at the lies in the newspaper, what the prosecution leaked vs. what the actual case was (link to interview).

Further, Lifetime's brand is women getting screwed over by men.  The natural villain for a Lifetime production, even knowing nothing else would be Mignini or Guede.

Its entirely possible I'm wrong.  I've made some bad calls before from the crystal ball.  And certainly I'd feel better if  Candace Dempsey had written the screen play.  But every indication I read is that the Guilters are fully justified in their freak out.  I'm going to take the liberty to answer their string of questions they have raised.

Like Arline Kercher, Meredith’s mum, we wonder why only the name “Amanda Knox” appears in the title of the film when the victim is named Meredith Kercher. And finally, we wonder why, if Amanda Knox’s family and friends are unassociated with this project, as they claim to be, they are being given an hour of airtime directly following its scheduled showing? (Open letter on true justice protesting the movie)

As I mentioned in my earlier article on Amanda Knox and the Shadow they repeat the silly point that the movie should be named after Meredith Kercher, even though the movie is about Knox not Kercher.  I addressed this bizarre notion that Knox is not a person in her own right but only a negative image of Kercher in my shadow article.   But to use the analogy from Dornhelm in this article, his movie is called, Requiem for Dominic, its named after the man accused wrongly not after the 80 people who died in the Timisoara massacre.

"What possible justification could there ever be for inflicting this kind of pain on the real-life, grieving family of Meredith Kercher?"  Saving the life of two kids for one thing.  Preventing this sort of injustice from occurring again for another thing.

"Does it enhance our understanding of this heinous crime in any way? No, it does not."  Of course it does.  Most people who see this movie will know little if anything about the crime and will know far more about it after the movie.

Does it serve to dissuade others from engaging in such acts? Do you believe there are large numbers of people contemplating rape, torture, murders that need to be dissuaded from this course of action through a movie or two?  What an odd question.


And then they close with this accusation about a bunch of people they know nothing about.  On the contrary, it breeds the kind of callous disregard for human life and lack of empathy that led to this gratuitous act of violence in the first place and that apparently characterizes those who have produced, directed and otherwise participated in the project.  The group of people who signed this letter, PMF, delights with open glee in acts of cruelty frequently complementing one another on their success in acting with callous disregard for others.   But ignoring that.  No one has any idea what led to this act of violence in the first place.  It may have been a disregard for human life, it may been lust, it may have been greed, or any of dozens of possible motives.  We just don't know that's part of the problem with the case never having been investigated properly.

But, what we do know is the people who produced this movie are good people.  I may not think much of Hayden Panettiere as an actress, but as a human being far from callous she's been active in Save the Whales for years.  Just to prove how absolutely not callous she is in this video you can see her break down in sobbing tears when she fails to save some dolphins:


You can also hear her being interviewed where she is excited about being arrested by the Japanese because it would give publicity to the cause.   She's been active in other environmental causes.   And Dornhelm, as I mentioned is someone who changed his life in response to a human tragedy.  Marcia Gay Harden who we also mentioned is extremely active in the Red Cross, and is on the board of Hearts of Gold which helps New York's homeless especially homeless children.  Valentina Carnelutti who plays Dr. Patrizia Stefanoni has done wonders in fighting against sexual abuse of children.  So again we see that the accusers of Knox just make up facts about others.

What I see are more good people, standing up for the truth and holding a light into the darkness that the Migninis of this world wish to create.

Words from a murder, repentance vs. innocence

A couple times I've used the Gary Gilmore analogy.  I'm going to do it again by contrasting a pair of speeches, Amanda's statement in her appeal vs. Gary Gilmore's first letter to Nicole Baker after his arrest (written Aug 3, 1976).   Both are the thoughts of people looking down the barrel of annihilation.  For those who don't know, Gilmore will go on to be the first man executed after the reimposition of the death penalty.  He's been arrested for 2 murders during the course of a robbery.    Gary in Green, Amanda in Red italic.  

Amanda asserts her innocence, while Gary is "repentant" in the way guilters would have liked her to be:

I look around the ugly vile cell and know that I truly belong in a place this dank and dirty, for where else should I be?

  vs   Raffaele and I are innocent, and we want to live our lives in freedom. We are not responsible for Meredith's death, and, I repeat, no justice is accomplished by taking our lives away. 

Gary agrees he is a threat to society; Amanda asserts she has never been a threat: 

I’m so used to bullshit and hostility, deceit and pettiness, evil and hatred. Those things are my natural habitat. They have shaped me. I look at the world through eyes that suspect, doubt, fear, hate, cheat, mock, are selfish and vain. vs.  Ask them if I have ever been violent, aggressive or uncaring in front of the suffering that is part of the broken lives in prison. Because I assure you that I'm not like that. I assure you that I have never resembled the images painted by the prosecution.  How could it be possible that I could be capable of achieving the kind of violence that Meredith suffered? How could it be possible that I could throw myself like that at the opportunity to hurt one of my friends? such a violence, as though it were more important and more natural than all my teaching, all my values, all my dreams and my whole life?

Amanda is often attacking for not being repentent.  Gary Gilmore is quite repentent, he killed two people to speed up his ability to make payments for a truck.  Amanda is sorry only that the whole thing happened:

Eat my heart out for the wondrous love you gave me that I threw away Monday nite because I was so spoiled and couldn’t immediately have a white pickup truck I wanted? vs. 

The only thing I am really sorry about now is that there are people to whom I should turn, who are not here, but I hope my words will reach them, because I am either locked in prison, or I'm here. And...I'm here. To the family and dear ones of Meredith, I want to say that I'm so sorry that Meredith is not here any more. I can't know how you feel, but I too have little sisters, and the idea of their suffering and infinite loss terrifies me. It's incomprehensible, it's unacceptable, what you're going through, and what Meredith underwent. [Long pause] I'm sorry all this happened to you and that you'll never have her near you, where she should be. It's not just and never will be.

Finally look at how they responded to the murder.  Gary identifies with the person going to gallows, Amanda bravely declares she is entitled to a normal life, that is all just an enormous error:

Remember I told you about The Oldness? And you told me how ugly it was - the oldness, the oldness. I can hear the tumbrel wheels creek. So fucking ugly and coming so close to me. When I was a child… I had a dream about being beheaded. But it was more than just a dream. More like a memory. It brought me right out of the bed. And it was sort of a turning point in my life… Recently it has begun to make a little sense. I owe a debt, from a long time ago. Nicole, this must depress you. I’ve never told anybody of this thing, except my mother the nite I had that nitemare and she came in to comfort me but we never spoke of it after that. And I started to tell you one nite and I told you quite a bit of it before it became plain to me that you didn’t want to hear it. There have been years when I haven’t even thought much of it at all and then something (a picture of a guillotine, a headmans block, or a broad ax, or even a rope) will bring it all back and for days it will seem I’m on the verge of knowing something very personal, something about myself. Something that somehow wasn’t completed and makes me different. Something I owe, I guess. Wish I knew. vs.

Because I felt an affinity towards her, suddenly, in her death, I recognized my own vulnerability. I clung above all to Raffaele, who was a source of reassurance, consolation, availability and love for me. I also trusted the authorities carrying out the investigation, because I wanted to help render justice for Meredith. It was another shock to find myself accused and arrested. I needed a lot of time to accept that reality, of being accused, and redefined unjustly. I was in prison, my photo was everywhere. Insidious, unjust, nasty gossip about my private life circulated about me. Living through this experience has been unacceptable for me. I have trusted above all to the hope that everything will be arranged as it should have been, and that this enormous error about me will be recognized, and that every day that I spend in a cell and in court is one day nearer to my liberty. This is my consolation, in the darkness, that lets me live without despairing, doing my best to continue my life as I always have, in contact with my dear friends and my family, dreaming about the future.

You can stop here, or read the full versions below:

August 3, 1976 from Gary Gilmore

Nothing in my experience, prepared me for the kind of honest open love you gave me. I’m so used to bullshit and hostility, deceit and pettiness, evil and hatred. Those things are my natural habitat. They have shaped me. I look at the world through eyes that suspect, doubt, fear, hate, cheat, mock, are selfish and vain. All things unacceptable, I see them as natural and have even come to accept them as such. I look around the ugly vile cell and know that I truly belong in a place this dank and dirty, for where else should I be? There’s water all over the floor from the fucking toilet that don’t flush right. The shower is filthy and the thin mattress they gave me is almost black, it’s so old. I have no pillow. There are dead cockroaches in the corners. At nite there are mosquitoes and the lite is very dim. I’m alone here with my thoughts and I can feel the oldness. Remember I told you about The Oldness? And you told me how ugly it was - the oldness, the oldness. I can hear the tumbrel wheels creek. So fucking ugly and coming so close to me. When I was a child… I had a dream about being beheaded. But it was more than just a dream. More like a memory. It brought me right out of the bed. And it was sort of a turning point in my life… Recently it has begun to make a little sense. I owe a debt, from a long time ago. Nicole, this must depress you. I’ve never told anybody of this thing, except my mother the nite I had that nitemare and she came in to comfort me but we never spoke of it after that. And I started to tell you one nite and I told you quite a bit of it before it became plain to me that you didn’t want to hear it. There have been years when I haven’t even thought much of it at all and then something (a picture of a guillotine, a headmans block, or a broad ax, or even a rope) will bring it all back and for days it will seem I’m on the verge of knowing something very personal, something about myself. Something that somehow wasn’t completed and makes me different. Something I owe, I guess. Wish I knew.


Once you asked me if I was the devil, remember? I’m not. The devil would be far more clever than I, would operate on a much larger scale and of course would feel no remorse. So I’m not Beelzebub. And I know the devil can’t feel love. But I might be further from God than I am from the devil. Which is not a good thing. It seems that I know evil more intimately than I know goodness and that’s not a good thing either. I want to get even, to be made even, whole, my debts paid (whatever it may take!) to have no blemish, no reason to feel guilt or fear. I hope this ain’t corny, but I’d like to stand in the sight of God. To know that I’m just and right and clean. When you’re this way you know it. And when you’re not, you know that too. It’s all inside of us, each of us - but I guess I ran from it and when I did try to approach it, I went about it wrong, became discouraged, bored, lazy, and finally unacceptable. But what do I do now? I don’t know. Hang myself?


I’ve thought about that for years, I may do that. Hope the state executes me? That’s more acceptable and easier than suicide. But they haven’t executed anybody here since 1963 (just about the last year for legal executions anywhere). What do I do, rot in prison? Growing old and bitter and eventually work this around in my mind to where it reads that I’m the one who’s getting fucked around, that I’m just an innocent victim of society’s bullshit? What do I do? Spend a life in prison searching for the God I’ve wanted to know for such a long time? Resume my painting? Write poetry? Play handball? Eat my heart out for the wondrous love you gave me that I threw away Monday nite because I was so spoiled and couldn’t immediately have a white pickup truck I wanted? What do I do? We always have a choice, don’t we?


I’m not asking you to answer these questions for me, Angel, please don’t think that I am. I have to make my own choice. But anything you want to comment on or suggest, or say, is always welcome.


God, I love you, Nicole.

Amanda's speech in court: (translated from Italian by PMF)


...It would happen sometimes that someone would propose a subject to discuss among us, everyone giving their opinion. I liked to followed these discussions but I was uncomfortable about whether I should participate directly, because I'm not talented for discussions. Often I don't succeed in expressing my convictions, at least verbally right at the moment. In fact, of all my friends, I'm the weakest for this. That's why, jokingly, my friend would usually jump on this, that my character was so peace-loving, and would challenge me with a little sentence: “Stand up for yourself Poindexter”, which means “Defend yourself, grind” [secchiona=someone who studies too hard, too serious]. It was a joke. And inevitably, either I would answer, but the answer coming out of my mouth would get all twisted incomprehensible...incomprehensibly around itself, or, I just didn't succeed in answering at all, because my mind would get blocked and my tongue would get all stuck. I couldn't do the thing that my friend often asked me to do, which was to defend myself. We have to imagine [Figuriamoci se io...not easy to render in English: maybe “You can imagine”] that I'm the weakest person in this room for expressing myself. That's why I ask for patience, because all this that I've prepared are the things that I didn't succeed in saying to you yet. Or better, I find myself in front of you for the second time, but these are the things that I would like to have said already. I ask you for patience because there have been opportunities to speak, but I was of few words. I believe that often words didn't come to me, because I never expected to find myself here, condemned for a crime I didn't do. In these three years, I've learned your language, and I've seen how the procedure goes, but I've never gotten used to this broken life. I still don't know how to face all this [3:00] if not just by being myself, who I've always been, in spite of the suffocating awkwardness. I was wrong to think that there are right or wrong places and moments to say important things. Important things have to be said, and that's all.


The only thing I am really sorry about now is that there are people to whom I should turn, who are not here, but I hope my words will reach them, because I am either locked in prison, or I'm here. And...I'm here. To the family and dear ones of Meredith, I want to say that I'm so sorry that Meredith is not here any more. I can't know how you feel, but I too have little sisters, and the idea of their suffering and infinite loss terrifies me. It's incomprehensible, it's unacceptable, what you're going through, and what Meredith underwent. [Long pause] I'm sorry all this happened to you and that you'll never have her near you, where she should be. It's not just and never will be. If you're not alone when you're thinking of her, because I'm thinking of you, I also remember Meredith, [5:00] and my heart bleeds for all of you. Meredith was kind, intelligent, nice and always available. She was the one who invited me to see Perugia, with her, as a friend. I'm grateful and honored to have been able to be in her company and to have been able to know her.


Patrick? I don't see you. But, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, because I didn't want to wrong you. I was very naïve and really not courageous, because I should have been able to endure the pressure that pushed me to hurt you. I didn't want to contribute to all that you suffered. You know what it means to have unjust accusations imposed on your skin. You didn't deserve what you went through. I hope you'll succeed in finding your peace.


Meredith's death was a terrible shock for me. She was my new friend, a reference point for me here in Perugia. But she was killed. [7:00] Because I felt an affinity towards her, suddenly, in her death, I recognized my own vulnerability. I clung above all to Raffaele, who was a source of reassurance, consolation, availability and love for me. I also trusted the authorities carrying out the investigation, because I wanted to help render justice for Meredith. It was another shock to find myself accused and arrested. I needed a lot of time to accept that reality, of being accused, and redefined unjustly. I was in prison, my photo was everywhere. Insidious, unjust, nasty gossip about my private life circulated about me. Living through this experience has been unacceptable for me. I have trusted above all to the hope that everything will be arranged as it should have been, and that this enormous error about me will be recognized, and that every day that I spend in a cell and in court is one day nearer to my liberty. This is my consolation, in the darkness, that lets me live without despairing, doing my best to continue my life as I always have, in contact with my dear friends and my family, dreaming about the future. [9:06]


Now, I am unjustly condemned, and more aware than ever of this hard and undeserved reality. I still hope for justice, and dream about a future. Even if this experience of three years weighs me down with anguish and fear, here I am, in front of you, more intimidated than ever, not because I'm afraid or could ever be afraid of the truth, but because I have already seen justice go wrong. The truth about me and Raffaele is not yet recognized, and we are paying with our lives for a crime that we did not commit. He and I deserve freedom, like everyone in this courtroom today. We don't deserve the three years that we already paid, and we certainly don't deserve more. I am innocent. Raffaele is innocent. We did not kill Meredith. [10:54] I beg you to truly consider that an enormous mistake has been made in regard to us. No justice is rendered to Meredith or her dear ones by taking our lives away and making us pay for something we didn't do. I am not the person that the prosecution says I am, not at all. According to them, I'm a dangerous, diabolical, jealous, uncaring and violent girl. Their hypotheses depend on this. But I've never been that girl. Never. The people who know me are witnesses of my personality. My past, I mean my real past, not the one talked about in the tabloids, proves that I've always been like this, like I really am, and if all this is not enough, I ask you, I invite you, I ask you to ask the people who have been guarding me for three years. Ask them if I have ever been violent, aggressive or uncaring in front of the suffering that is part of the broken lives in prison. Because I assure you that I'm not like that. I assure you that I have never resembled the images painted by the prosecution. [13:00] How could it be possible that I could be capable of achieving the kind of violence that Meredith suffered? How could it be possible that I could throw myself like that at the opportunity to hurt one of my friends? [?] such a violence, as though it were more important and more natural than all my teaching, all my values, all my dreams and my whole life? All this is not possible. That girl is not me. I am the girl that I have always shown myself to be and have always been. I repeat that I also am asking for justice. Raffaele and I are innocent, and we want to live our lives in freedom. We are not responsible for Meredith's death, and, I repeat, no justice is accomplished by taking our lives away. [Whispers: “okay”] Um, thank you 

NET Bible upgrade

The NET bible, which is my recommendation for all around best evangelical bible has just done a nice interface upgrade.  If you haven't tried them yet or have and like them take a look at the new interface.

http://net.bible.org