The contempt of the world

A nice turn of phrase: Eucherius lays the axe to the root of the tree, by shewing him the vanity, and the iniquity of riches and honours, the two grand inticements of popular spirits. And this he doth with such powerful and clear reasons, that to virtuous and peaceful minds he hath rendered them not only contemptible, but odious. Much more might have been spoken against them, but — seeing the age we live in hath made all his arguments demonstrations — he hath in my judgement spoken enough.

Overton Window

From anglican.ca: "Pastoral Liturgies at the Time of Death in Contexts of Medically Assisted Dying" Authorised for Trial Use, Evaluation and Feedback where permitted by the Ordinary by the Council of General Synod, June 2026

Many of the conversations around what constitutes a good death seek to enshrine dignity of the dying person as the highest value. Very often, the understanding of dignity is tied to one’s autonomy in agency – being able to think, act, and make decisions on one’s own. Human dignity, however, rests in our being created by a loving God. It is not something to be tied to a question of worth to be determined according to standards that place autonomy as the highest value of dignity. God has given us dignity and worth as part of who we are as God’s creatures. Our agency in health care decisions is, furthermore, something that we need to entrust to God in our discernment. We do not make decisions alone, but in the presence of God.

Some Anglicans have had profound experiences in which a death by MAiD has been accompanied by faithful prayer and strong pastoral care. Other Anglicans hold that MAiD does not offer any moral good, and may indeed be against God's wishes for humanity. Many of us share concerns about the potentials for abuse of the practice through coercion or in the fragilities of a health care system that is in crisis. All of us in Canada, especially clergy and other pastoral care ministers, are likely at some point in our ministries, to be met with a request for pastoral care and prayer by someone who has opted for a medically assisted death.

Our intention is to help the church’s ministers to respond pastorally to the needs before them. It is not our intent to enter into the ethical arguments regarding MAiD, nor to provide a moral argument for or against MAiD.(1)

... (1) The General Synod has produced several resources since the legalization of medically assisted dying. In Sure and Certain Hope, 2017, presented a pastoral response with some pastoral and prayer resources, upholding the duty of pastoral care, and also holding up some key theological principles of caution with respect to MAiD. Faith Seeking Understanding: Medical Assistance in Dying: Reflections by Canadian Anglicans, 2024, gathered up over forty reflections from theological, pastoral and ethical perspectives by Canadian Anglicans, representing a wide collection of experiences and positions on the ethics of MAiD.

Yikes. True, the intro says "Human dignity, ... is not something to be tied to a question of worth to be determined according to standards that place autonomy as the highest value of dignity." And the 2017 document is " holding up some key theological principles of caution with respect to MAiD". But the 2024 document is "representing a wide collection of experiences and positions." It sounds like they don't know how to say no and stick to it.

"To some following some Dioceses’ guidance or their own consciences, it will be important to walk the challenging path in choosing and adapting prayers in this resource that do not imply that the procedure, the medical assistance in dying itself, and the decision to employ MAiD, are not being given God’s blessing." I read that as meaning that they foresee priests sometimes giving a blessing to the procedure and the decision, or picking prayers that imply that (which seems dishonest if they don't). Perhaps they mis-spoke.

They consider the possibility of having "Confession and Absolution" as part of the liturgy.

At Lambeth in 1930 the Anglicans "affirmed the permissibility of birth control for married couples who felt a moral obligation to forgo both ‘parenthood’ and ‘complete abstinence’". Shortly after, many other denominations jumped on the bandwagon, and uncounted couples decided that they met the criteria, and the Overton window shifted.

I hope that isn't going to be the case here.

FWIW, a Liturgy on the Day of an Execution doesn't seem to quite fit.

"Finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order"

An image rather than a logical analysis: The world of a pagan or animist is full of spirits and gods, sometimes in unexpected places, providing unexpected limits on what you want to do. Beware of transgressing the ancient sacred sites and sacred rites that divide the physical and moral landscape.

When monotheism arrives, most of the sacred sites are swept away, and those that remain are, as it were, baptized into meaning as part of the monotheism. The landscape is cleaned and emptied, to some degree dis-enchanted, certainly somewhat exorcised.

If the monotheism fades, what new demons come to fill that now-empty space?

The Ancient City

(La Cite Antique) by Fustel de Coulanges (1830-1889). The title could more appropriately be The Ancient Cities of Greece, Rome, and the Hindus, since he does not really deal with the constitution of the cities of Persia or Egypt--possibly because of a lack of information through translation issues and fewer sources. I suspect he would have found substantial points of difference with his thesis in those cities.

His thesis is that the family, with its attendant ancestor worship, was the foundation of the clan and eventually the city, and that what bound all of these together was the worship of their ancestors.

The priest was the father, his successor his son, and everything--all ancestral lands, rights, authority came though the rituals about the ancestral tomb and the sacred fire. When families clustered, they retained individual worships, though the city would develop its own sacred fire. The eldest son gets it all; the rest of the family are subsidiary branches.

Without a recognized sacred fire, you have no right to property. In fact, the family owns the land, and the family is governed by the patriarch. Foreigners are suspect, without religion or rights; laws don't really apply to them.

Of course this develops over time, and one winds up with a city with a tiny aristocracy of priest/proprieters, a large number of clients of the same, and of course slaves.

That can evolve further, as with Rome, to include a pleb population as well--not clients and not slaves.

Stability gets to be a problem here, and cities begin to undergo revolutions (the poor side with kings against the aristocrat/priests), and the old religion begins to matter less. He describes the rise of Rome, attributing part of it to Roman early efforts to appropriate the religions and ethnicities of their neighbors, making alliance (and eventual domination) easier, and describes the effects of the empire effectively removing the religious/political rites that held conquered ancient cities together. Eventually the only citizenship that mattered was Roman, which became easier and easier to acquire (up to Caracalla's decree that gave it to every free man).

He ends with the rise of Christianity and the replacement of local gods with a universal one. The gods of the city vanished.

I'll assume that his historical references are all correct. The thesis is interesting, and plausible--within some limits.

As he says himself, Spain and Gaul didn't have these kinds of cities, so Rome established them after the conquest. He doesn't mention Egypt at all.

Over and over he hammers home the point that without the sacred fire and ancestor worship, you had no religion. But I don't think that's true. It doesn't quite match human experience: there were other gods than those of the hearth, even in the same land, and worshippers of one would have had some kind of common bond. The Eleusinian Mysteries is well known. (not sure how old it is, though)

Without a better background in the field (and no way to read primary sources myself) I take this as a partial description of the formation of some of the cities of antiquity.

Have a look yourself.

The Kindle copy I have looks like somebody quit checking for OCR typos somewhere around part 3.

Scarlet or white ribbon?

Youtube tossed up at me a video claiming that the Talmud recorded a change in the scapegoat ritual at the Temple at about 30AD. I didn't watch the video; typically there's little addressing of ambiguities in such things.

The ritual of the scapegoat on the Day of Atonement is probably, if not familiar, at least known, to anybody who has read Leviticus. As part of it, the priest took two goats, cast lots for them. One was sacrificed, and the other driven into the wilderness.

The Talmud and Mishnah and Epistle of Barnabas and Tertullian mention a couple of modifications, not spelled out in Leviticus.

A red ribbon was divided, part tied around the scapegoat, and part {retained in the temple/tied to a rock near the cliff}. The scapegoat was then {driven out of the city/taken to a cliff and pushed off}. I suppose that as the area grew more populated, wilderness as such got to be harder to come by. Whichever, when the scapegoat died, the retained part turned white, presumably representing the purification of sins per Isaiah 1:18.

I hadn't run across that before. From the Palesinian Talmud:

During all those days that Shim‘on the righteous was alive, the scarlet ribbon would [always] turn white (malbin). After Shim‘on the Righteous died—at times it would turn white (malbin) and at times it would turn red (ma’adim).

Shim'on the Righteous was "a semi-mythical high priest whose period of activity is roughly dated to the third century BCE and who serves in rabbinic literature as the ultimate embodiment of a forlorn golden age"

The Babylonian Talmud is similar; except that instead of sometimes turning red it sometimes "did not turn white."

It should be noted that in another tractate of the Babylonian Talmud (Rosh HaShanah 31b) the same passage appears with somewhat different wording: “Forty years before the Temple was destroyed the scarlet ribbon would not turn white, but would turn red

A slightly different citation, from the Babylonian Talmud:

It was taught: Forty years before the Temple was destroyed the [flame] of the western candle would die down, and the scarlet ribbon would turn red (ma’adim), and the lot [with the Name] would come up in the left [hand], and they would lock the doors of the Temple hall in the evening and rise in the morning and find them open. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai said to it: Temple, why are you frightening us? We know that you are destined to be destroyed,

Taken by itself the latter passage's symbolic connection to Jesus is obvious: temple isn't needed anymore. But the presence of the other references makes it ambiguous.

FWIW, The Torah.com notes a number of pagan uses of red thread and scapegoat-like ceremonies (e.g. "Now, any evil of this camp that has been found in person, cattle, sheep, horses, wild asses, or donkeys—right now, here, these rams and the woman have removed it from the camp. Whoever finds them, may that population take this evil plague for itself.")

I draw no conclusions from this, except that even things that seem to be clearly prescribed may have unexpected accretions.

Looking for happiness

BBC has a story on a man's "searching for secret to happiness".

"Anyone that is fixated on making you feel happy all the time is selling you snake oil" ... "If I could pick one thing that made the greatest difference - after I had been stabilised with treatment - it was, and always will be, work." But not just workaholic type work...

Nobody will tell you what a brave, talented person you are for doing the work of real happiness. But you will feel it in the reactions of people you love, the gratitude of waking up without a sense of dread, the awareness of beauty around you. And knowing you will keep your commitments, and live as a person who doesn't just talk about caring for people but does their best to live that talk.

He quotes Raymond Carver's tombstone inscription, the ideas of which should sound very familiar to many of us (funny how Wikipedia ignores the religious (even if not explicitly christian) aspects of his life):

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Observant Secular Jew

Judaism without God is an opinion peice posted at the Times of Israel addressing the problem of being simultaneously atheist and Jewish. Nathan Cardozo admits that it's hard to think of commandments without a Commander, but

The problem, however, is that Jewish history proves over and over again that the moment Jews stop being observant, assimilation sets in, and within a short period of time Jews stop being Jews and their grandchildren are lost to the Jewish people.

But, stipulating that the Jews must continue to exist, how is one to be observant without a motive? His answer boils down to "Teach ourselves to do it anyway."

when Judaism is taught and lived such that the secular Jew will be so uplifted by the grand ideas of Jewish Tradition that, despite his denial that God exists, he cannot resist living by its sublime directives.

...

One can only understand the meaning of Shabbat when one experiences Shabbat by actually observing it. To claim otherwise is identical to a person who denies the sublime beauty of music on the basis that he never heard it.

...

It will be necessary to organize special courses and even academies to teach Judaism in such a manner that even the most secular Jew will be inspired and feel the inner need to become observant without admitting that there is a God.

So far, so speculative, not to say fanciful--though he has a good point about the Sabbath. But then he wrote:

In this respect he is greater than the religious Jew. He is the authentic Baal Teshuva!

Of course that begs the question. If the religious Jew is obeying a real God, he is in touch with something greater than any academy or human resolution.

You can inspire some people to follow some commandments because of their beauty: the Sabbath, for example. But I'm not sure what you can say to make eschewing bacon and pepperoni pizza attractive.

If you tarry 'til you're better

You will never come at all.

An Episcopal priest has decided that Jesus' demand that you be reconciled to your brother before coming to the altar means he mustn't celebrate the Eucharist, or take it, until the church has dealt with its history of "white supremacy." Not surprisingly, he'll probably be defrocked.

He seems to be either objecting to God's denial of inherited punishment or claiming that we can make ourselves pure enough on our own. He'd do better, I think, to claim that inequalities of income or status represent current sins -- there's a little more of a tradition of that sort of claim.

Protests such as Ramey’s have been key to forcing change in the Episcopal Church, said the Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, former dean and president of Episcopal Divinity School in New York City. Bishops ordained 11 women to the priesthood in 1974, in defiance of church policy. In 2007, five priests in Massachusetts refused to officiate weddings until the church allowed them to perform same-sex marriages.

FWIW, This Douglas the story cites is called "an expert on racial reconcilliation." She's written a book, but permit me to wonder who exactly she has managed to reconcile. I’ve said it before and will continue to say: you can’t be white and Christian. I don’t mean that in terms of looking like a white American, but instead, the construct of “white.” With allies like that...

It looks like he decided that his parish (he resigned, btw) was obstinately sinful because of the inaction of the greater church, and that he should declare his own interdict.

Despair and purpose

The hymn had the line "threatens the soul with infinite loss." When do we see that infinite loss?

Despair testifies to that loss. Nobody cares if a leaf blows. If the stakes in our lives were as trivial as that, mere chance or determinist, why would we care? If there were no purpose, if nothing mattered, winning and losing would be so much dust, of no more account that yesterday's breakfast.

But despair says that the significance of success or failure in life is greater than the life itself. Some despair that there is any purpose in life, their pain testifying to how important a purpose would be.

Despair doesn't see the whole picture, of course, and so it expedites the very infinite loss that it dreads.

A cure brings its own issues

A link from AVI's page points to the Orthosphere, where today you find a post on Lewis Carroll and formality in worship. I admit that when I read the Sylvie and Bruno books I paid little attention to the prefaces, and Carroll's complaints. Have a look for yourself. A necessary correction to irreverent informality brought the risk of superficial formality. "a liturgy that requires the congregation to kneel in prayer is a liturgy that will teach many in the congregation—especially the children—how to pretend they are praying."

In the books referenced, Carroll tried what I take to have been a novel blend of the surreal and natural, in which fairyland intermittently overlaps our world. I recommend the books, with the caveat that I found Bruno's lisping accent gratingly precious. Sylvie and Bruno and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded

But take my literary recommendations with a grain of salt; I also like Pippa Passes

Temple Passovers

A book cited Josephus The Wars of the Jews telling us that during the reign of Nero a Jewish population estimate was made based on the number of Passover lambs sacrificed. That was counted to be 256,500 (some rounding likely). (And for the census, the resulting estimate was 2.7 million.)

The sacrifices were supposed to only be done from the ninth hour until the eleventh (3pm to 5pm, very roughly). That's a pretty tight window; almost 36 every second, almost 2200 every minute!

From this source I picked up a description of the temple passover (different from Moses' and from the current one) that seems consistent:

The paschal lamb was slaughtered in three groups… when the first group entered and the Temple court was filled, the gates of the Temple were closed. A tekiah, teruah, and again a tekiah were then blown on the shofar. The priests stood in rows, and in their hands were basins of silver and basins of gold. … An Israelite slaughtered his offering and the priests caught the blood. The priest passed the basin to his fellow priest, and he to his fellow, each receiving a full basin and giving back an empty one. The priest nearest to the altar tossed the blood against the base of the altar. While this ritual was performed the Levites sang the Hallel [Talmud Pesachim 64a].

I don't know how old the lambs were, but a 50 pound lamb would have something over a quart of blood (6% of body weight), and assuming that only about half of that is taken, and half of that is actually thrown on the altar, that's about 64 cubic meters of blood to drain (and wash!) away. From this site: "Beneath the floor of the Azarah courtyard, near the southwestern corner of the Altar, was a cave. Access to the cave was by means of a 2-foot square hole that was covered by a marble slab. In the floor of the cave was a natural system of drains that led the blood of the sacrificial Altar out into the Kidron Valley below the Temple Mount."

In two hours--call it three because drains can be slow--that's a lot of drainage. I'd heard it said that the result, including the necessary rinsing, would have made blood and water flow visibly, which John noticed in Jesus--a connection I wouldn't have thought of.

If the people stood 300 abreast, with the "bucket brigade" (I'm sorry, that's what it sounds like), that leaves only a few seconds for them to slaughter the lamb and move out of the way for the next people. I think you'd need several rows of people all at work at once. I guess it could work, with good traffic management and thousands of priests.

I remember when a delayed Delta flight disgorged into the Paris airport. It looked like complete chaos at the desks, but somehow we all got processed quite quickly. They got used to this sort of thing, and knew how to manage it.

Still, wow.

Liberation

The World War 2 Museum in New Orleans was worth visiting. Yes, it took more than a day to cover. If it had told the viewpoints of more countries it would probably have taken weeks.

I gather that they have a large collection of personal stories--many of which are integrated into the displays. We didn't see all of the displayed ones. I should contact them and see if there's internet access to their archives.

In one auditorium they ran video distillations of interviews with concentration camp liberators and inmates. Horror and anger and disbelief on one side, and joy, numbness, and disbelief on the other. One stuck with me:

An American told a hungry Jewish prisoner that he was free to leave the camp now, and that he'd be happy to take him to get some food. The man thanked him, and in the interview told us the rest of his story, as he explained it to his liberator. (My quotation will not be perfect.)

Here I was a slave. Not a Jewish slave; a slave. If they gave me non-kosher food, I had to eat it or die. If they said work, I had to work or die. If they said work on Shabbat, I had to work on Shabbat or die. But you have come, and now I am a free man. It is Shabbat, and a free man does not have to travel on Shabbat. I will stay here one more day.

They that make them will become like them

Kristor at Orthosphere has a series of posts on “Anselmian Skeleton Key”, in which he attempts to demonstrate the existence or at least plausibility of a god along the lines of the Christian understanding of God.

His problem is that a demonstration is not convincing, since to be convinced requires assent by the “convincee”.

If the “convincee” thinks the price of changing gods is too high (it might include admitting that he was wrong!), or the risk too great, his “most important”/”greatest thing in the universe” won’t change.

What does it mean to me if I believe that something is the most important thing in the universe? On reflection, it needn’t mean anything unless it is also the most important thing in “my universe.”

I could claim, for instance, that the most important/greatest thing in the universe is Cygnus X-3. It’s the center of the universe (so is anywhere else, of course) and a thing of immense power–nothing in our galaxy comes close. Yet I cannot even see it; nothing it is doing has any bearing on me (yet!), nor does anything I do have any bearing on it. It makes no demands of me, offers no benefits. It is King Log–or perhaps I should say “God Log.” In “my universe” the Earth and Sun are more important–I rely on them every day–as are other things like my wife and home and even my library.

I could claim that the deist god is the ultimate. The Watchmaker non-interventionist god makes no more demands on my life than does Cygnus X-3, though it does help my mind understand the world better, and begin to understand understanding.

In a purely materialist universe I have no reason to claim I truly know anything–I react in certain ways, and that’s all one can say. A deist can point to an origin in order and reason, and to some degree share in that. A deist has a different (I would say higher) conception of himself because he has a different (higher) conception of his god.

Unfortunately the term “Greatest” or “Most important” is a bit ambiguous in “my universe.” Theory and practice diverge. I may say that (e.g.) my wife is the most important thing in “my universe”, and even be willing in a pinch to give up my life for her (giving up everything else in the process), but have little reflection of this value in day to day decisions or attitudes.

Alternatively, I might say that I valued God more than anything, and am committed to my religious duties–unless there’s a game on. Or that all fellow believers/worshippers are my brothers and sisters unless one expresses a political view I don’t like.

In both sets of examples my nominal values conflict with my values as expressed in action. The inconsistency might be due to indiscipline, or there might be an unacknowledged greater value. One, or perhaps both, of those values is an idol for me. (You can easily devise other examples–a good Volk-worshiper who believed the Nazi party was its prophet who nevertheless out of compassion fed strangers without asking if the fugitive was Jewish.)

One can make a test out of this: “By their fruits you will know them.” Do I get more riled when somebody insults my favorite candidate or when someone insults my God? (I can make the excuse that God can take care of Himself but I have to look out for the reputation of my fellow-human. It would even likely be true for insults to family.) Does that tell something about what the real god of “my universe” is?

It might. We have it on good authority that it can be a useful way to find out what somebody else’s real god is too. But it might be merely the result of a sloppy life, or not having worked through the details yet. We’re good at giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt–except for those of us who are skilled at looking for worst cases in ourselves.

Take it a bit further. The work I do demands concentration on the thing more often than the purpose. That doesn’t necessarily mean I value the thing more than the purpose–though that is a risk–but how much should the purpose be part of my mind as I work? Am I working as if for the Lord if I’m thinking entirely about how to get this next leg attached to the chair?

I think the answer might be yes. Obviously that would make the test even less clear-cut that it already is. I suspect we need to be careful judging others, and also be careful judging ourselves. But not complacent. There are plenty of idols around, and plenty of people who are unquestionably idolaters. Greed amounts to idolatry, and we’re a-swamp in that–as usual. I could go on listing other idolatries to which I am not greatly tempted, but I think I’ll stop here.

But what my god is shapes what I choose, and shapes me.

Kingdoms of the world

Remember the story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness?

"showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory; and he said to Him, “All these things I will give You"

"I will give You all this domain and its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish."

I notice that Jesus doesn't bother to refute the devil's claim that he has the power to give the kingdoms of the world to whoever he pleases. We are confident that God can work everything for good for those who love Him, of course (well, we're supposed to be confident).

The supposition that the devil has a hand in selecting rulers and officials has a certain explanatory power for understanding history and current events.

UPDATE: Note that this applies to your guys as well as the ones that don't like you.

Satanism and the Iowa Capitol

You've all read the story that "The Satanic Temple" was allowed to put up a shrine to Baphomet in the Iowa Capitol, in order to not discriminate against religions. And that the statue was damaged by a Mississippi man who had posted earlier comparing the removal of a statue of Thomas Jefferson to the erecting of one to Satan.

On what grounds does the state decide that some belief is a religion, worthy of respect by others even if those others do not believe it? Because this represents noble beliefs of some large group of people who try to live their lives by it, benefitting all of us thereby? Because a lot of people give money to the founders to be purified using primitive lie detectors? Because I had a dream and really really believe that the First Potato is the sacred source of all existence?

We're remarkably generous in defining religions in the US. Some places are more skeptical.

There was never a reason to put the shrine up in the first place. A religion defines what is the most important thing in the universe--the thing from which all else depends. Perhaps it is a god; sometimes it is a principle (e.g. Theravada Buddhism). The emblems are of the "most important thing" or aspects of its action (e.g. no images in Islam, but words are OK). If you're polytheist you might have a problem picking one, but generally there's something believed to be behind them all.

If the group actually worshipped Satan--Satan doesn't make sense outside of a Christian context, in which Satan is not the most important thing (though he may be the most important thing in your life). In that case the image is not of the most important thing in the universe, and there's no reason for non-co-religionists to offer it any respect.

If, as this group claims, they don't believe in god and use Satan as a symbol of their rejection of religious rules--once again, there has to be a something for Satan to reject, and the symbol again fails to specify something primal.

The state is a human institution, no matter what delusions of grandeur its directors may develop. It won't always recognize truth, and there are not infrequently good reasons to oppose some aspects of its mandates. But rule rejection as a principle isn't good, and should not be honored with a shrine in a public building.

author of truth

"... the learned life. By leading that life to the glory of God I do not, of course, mean any attempt to make our intellectual inquiries work out to edifying conclusions. That would be, as Bacon says, to offer to the author of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie."

It matters what god you worship, though. Some gods require lies.

ancient magic

I was curious about a reference of Grim's: an ancient Icelandic spell book.

From the Galdrabok: Spell #8. To win a girl’s love

"Likewise, you should, while fasting, make the second helm of awe with your saliva in your palm when you greet the girl who you want to have; in such a case it should be in your right hand."

Does one shake hands afterwards?

It includes a psalm, and incantations which mix Christian, gnostic, demonic, and scandanavian god names.

This one seems untestable--who'd have time to do it? "31. Against troll-shot: If any kind of shot flies toward you, then read this verse right away: BUMEN SITTIMUS CALECTIMUS ME TASUS ELI ELOI SIEBAHOT ELEM VEAO NAJ" (or is is "ELOE SIEBAHAT" (spell 39)?

I picked up some history, and I took away a few things for a story I'm working on.

Creating the Qur'an

A Historical-Critical Study by Stephen J Shoemaker.

I've reported on books by Shoemaker before: early Dormition traditions, early Marian devotion, and the death of Mohammed.

The subtitle tells what he's doing. The official Muslim story is that Abu Bakr (1st of the rightly guided caliphs) noticed that lots of the people who knew what Mohammed had said were dying, and so he had Zayd assemble from recordings on palm branches, stones, camel bones, and "the hearts of men" a version of the Qur'an. Uthman (3rd of the rightly guided caliphs), noticed that different versions of the Qur'an were circulating, so he had the versions reviewed and a definitive version circulated and other versions destroyed.

Modern research into Islam generally accepts this as correct--though Shoemaker points out that this is thanks more to political correctness than to scholarship, since there are a number of equally ancient stories of how it was created, which differ substantially from the canonical version.

Shoemaker offers as evidence for his theory that Ad al-Malik was the definer of the Qur'an:

• Uthman, who died in a revolt against him, wasn't in a position to enforce a uniform Qur'an, whereas Ad al-Malik was--though not being one of the rightly guided caliphs it wouldn't do for him to try to define the Qur'an, hence suggesting that Uthman did it/started it.
• During al-Malik's reign references to Muhammed and the Qur'an start becoming common.
• Earlier non-Muslim descriptions of Islam don't mention Muhammed or any holy book
• Early Shi'ite sources claimed that Ali had first collected the Qur'an (in a longer version)
• Early (short) citations, as in the Dome of the Rock, differ slightly from the received Qur'an.
• John of Damascus, who as a civil servant for the caliph (as part of a family of such), would have been quite familiar with Muslim documents, shows familiarity with the sura Cow, but claims familiarity with another called The Camel of which no trace survives.

That seems pretty plausible to me. And I don't think it treads heavily on Muslim toes if it was al-Malik rather than Uthman.

But wait; there's more!

Shoemaker contends that the evidence says that oral cultures, such as the LoDagaa of Ghana, do not treat even sacred texts as immutable. The Bagre "is an extended religious poem that is recited in rhythmic speech primarily in a liturgical context and the contents of which provide the basic structure of the LoDagaa's social and religious practices." Goody found out that there were not only significant variations between different speakers, but even by the same speaker at different times. "Goody found that some of the elements that he initially considered most essential to the narrative were simply dropped from other versions." The claim is that, as far as we can tell (since except for studies like that of the Bagra, there's no way to know what was told the previous generation), oral cultures are worse at transmitting exact information than literate ones--and may not even value exactness much. Often, he claims, even the gist is lost.

This unreliability agrees with claims I mentioned about effigy mounds: elders claimed that they were recent, carbon dating says they aren't. OTOH, sometimes the gist is transmitted well enough to be verified by archaeology.

He relies on Close's work to say that Mecca wasn't a major trading center (other people assert that it was a cross-roads of trade routes), since, among other things, at the time much of the traffic would have gone by the far-away sea. Therefore Mecca was a small and rather simple town, with essentially no literacy. Muhammed is traditionally believed to have been illiterate.

Without literacy, he predicts, given the limitations of human memory (he devotes a chapter to research on this), that the stories people remembered Muhammed telling would have been retold with subtle and then less subtle variations, until a majority of the story was inaccurate. At best, the gist would remain, but not always that.

Now he is stomping on Muslim toes, hard. He brings historical-critical discussions of the Bible up as evidence for his assertions, together with the claim that the gospels were written late. This is a rather feeble reed: literacy among first century Jews was relatively high (I presume at least the tax collector Matthew could read/write), and literary evidence dates the synoptics earlier than the destruction of the temple. (Can you imagine someone quoting Jesus predicting the temple destruction without at least interjecting a hint about its demise? Unless you are forging the whole thing, it just isn't happening. And yes, interjections exist)

At any rate, he doesn't bring this part off well--too many assertions.

He addresses the radiocarbon dating of some early copies of the Qur'an that were recently found, which seem to predate al-Malik. Radiocarbon dating is good for the century, but the error bars are too large to date something to a few decades--so most of them could actually be later. He points out that some manuscripts predated Muhammed! Either the parchments were kept around for up to a century before being used (imaginable, if not probable), or there are systematic errors in the carbon dating. Dating methods were recalibrated back in 2020, and he notes that there are known to be northern/southern hemisphere differences and that there are alleged to be differences from zone to zone as well.

The Qur'an references things like fishing on the Sabbath, which isn't something you'd expect residents of Mecca to relate to very well. It offers a nativity story of Jesus that reflects the rituals of the Kathisma church, with details not found elsewhere. The Qur'an is described as being "in dialog" with Christianity at a level not to be expected in an illiterate backwater town in a region with no known Christian activity. (Christianity was found around the edges of the penninsula, but isn't recorded in the interior this early.)

So, maybe it was partly written in the Levant. The references to Christianity seem to have Syrian Christian details. (I go by what Shoemaker wrote here; I haven't looked this up.)

On the other hand, the Qur'an claims that some Christians were early converts. (Shoemaker thinks that's a later addition since Mecca wasn't a big or important place and there wouldn't have been any Christians there.) So knowledge of Christianity might have come from them.

On the third hand, militating against significant knowledge of Christianity (certainly not "in dialog" with it), is the howler in Sura 5:116, in which the Trinity is supposed to be the Father, Jesus, and Mary. There's an ancient Eastern Chuch document reference to an extinct group that thought this, but the chances that any survived to talk to Muhammed seem negligable. It's the kind of misunderstanding you'd get if you looked at the icons in a church without actually talking to any of the Christians.

With respect to literacy: There are references in the early stories claiming that several different people had copies of Muhammed's addresses, including one of his wives and Ali. There were scribes in the era. Also, one of the points he brings up to assert lack of literacy is primitive graffiti--he says it represents people learning by imitation but not able to write much. I think it suggests that even the illiterate wanted to show off what knowledge they had, which meant literacy was honored.

Other little details: there are parts of the Qur'an which early commenters couldn't figure out--words that they didn't know the meaning of, and even suras that couldn't quite be nailed down. The most probable of the options he suggests is that these are pre-Muhammed quotations.

Some parts are repeated, with slightly different wording. This is something a compiler might do when faced with two different versions and no clear way to pick one. He didn't give examples of repetitions that change the gist, but says they're there.

Overall, his model is that the Koran is composed of reconstructed versions of more or less what Muhammed said, sometimes with adaptations to the local Levant culture. He doesn't go so far as to say the latter are what Muhammed "would have said if he'd been in Syria", but he hints at it.

Over and over he says that texts are fluid--to the point of annoyance. When the texts have similar themes, I don't think they're as fluid as all that. The variants he lists side-by-side are in different order but are otherwise pretty much the same.

Each chapter is argued separately, but they often refer to the same things, which adds a degree of repetition to the text. He argues that the historical-critical approach is separate from but not antithetical to the traditional Muslim approach of believing the text--but it isn't true here any more than it is when applied to the Bible.

I learned a few things. I think he's right about al-Malik being the standarizer. I think some things were transmitted accurately--like the howler. I satisfied my " 'satiable curtiosity" to some degree, but I'm not convinced of his model. If this sort of historical argument intrigues you, read it, otherwise I hope my summary gives the gist.

Confessional

An ELCA priest confessed his infidelity to a fellow priest, who promptly told his bishop, who called the fellow's wife. I do not know the details well enough to know if there were any loopholes in the definitions or procedures that would authorize those reactions, but on the face of it they seem deeply improper.

The original priest betrayed his promise to his wife (the story says they are reconciling). If the story is true the second priest, and the bishop, betrayed their duties to the whole church--who will ever trust them, or possibly any priest, to hear a confession again?

Warrior Ascetics

Maybe "ascetic" brings to mind a guy who lives in the wilderness and doesn't eat a lot or like being around people much. If you're well versed in your religious traditions, you may have a more nuanced picture. After all, the Templars were effectively monks. But these surprised me.

That religious ascetics would be inducted into fighting regiments is neither necessarily perverse – in the context of the history of traditional Hinduism – nor necessarily a radical break from a previous mode of life. There is an obvious similarity in the lifestyles of both soldiers and ascetics: both require rigorous self-discipline, enduring the hardships of lengthy travel and extended periods of camping; subsistence, sometimes, on meager rations; being subservient to a commander or guru; and enduring extended (or permanent) celibacy. In medieval India, asceticism, trade, and war were not incompatible.

Fighting ascetics are usually referred to as nāgās (deriving from the Hindi term naṅgā, “naked”). Nāgās are usually almost naked, except for a loincloth (laṅgotī/kaupīn ̣ ),

There may be a reference to such armed ascetics in a 7'th century romance, and maybe references from the 9'th to 12'th centuries. In the 16'th century "scorn is poured on yogīs, siddhas (another name for yogīs), mahants (chiefs/superiors), and ascetics who resort to arms, keep women, and collect property and taxes." And the East India Company ran into them: "Peasants and marauding Sufi faqīrs and Daśanāmī gosāīṃs fought company troops in the Bengal region, with many casualties on all sides, in a series of military encounters"

I gather that this kind of naga, though transliterated into English the same as naga (serpent), isn't related or pronounced the same.