Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Reading into history what is not there

When I was in junior high, I purchased Carl Sandburg's four volume biography of Abraham Lincoln thinking that I would improve myself.  I read the first chapter and it was so unctuous and unrealistic, describing Lincoln as if he were some saint with a glowing halo literally walking on air and levitating. I was deeply disgusted. I am certain that Lincoln was a very great man but he was a human being with various strengths, weaknesses, insights but also blind-spots.  It does more harm than good to read into history what isn't there.   For example, there is a very bright scholarly person who is a deeply devout Eastern Orthodox Christian and I am certain I offended him because,  one day I posted regarding the doctrine of the Trinity to state that it is something which evolved and unfolded in history as a man-made construct with a certain agenda in mind. I was intrigued with the trinity in college and began to see threes, triads, triumverates everywhere and felt it was perhaps the fingerprint of a triune God. In later life, as I read Jaroslav Pelikan and others on the development of doctrine, it occurs to me that the first century Christians were a persecuted minority fighting a polytheistic majority and they had certain rhetorical agendas.  Even the Rabbis look at one verse in the Torah where Hashem G-D says to Abraham, "Do not worship the stars FOR THAT HAS BEEN GIVEN TO THE NATIONS."  So on the one hand the Christians HAD to portray themselves as monotheistic, but on the other hand they had the three hypostases of Father, Son and Spirit.  I am certain that http://bible.cc/1_john/5-7.htm is a textual l intercalation because it does not appear in all the ancient texts and surely it would have been cited as ammunition during the various disputes of Ecumenical Councils.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma_Johanneum  Anyway, my learned friend was offended that I question such a thing and said in so many words that I must have a bug up my ass or be in a bad mood or perhaps be off my rocker.

I sometimes think that the only PURE strict monotheists are the Muslims and I think their position about "shirk" and Allah not having any partners developed in history as a reaction or stance to other religions which bore some hint of polytheism. Even Judaism has the "shekinah" presence and the "hachma" wisdom. But I think it is obvious that Mohammad had a rhetorical agenda and need to react against any hint of polytheism just as the Christians had a two-fold need; ONE - to show that their beliefs were not NEW but really had always been present in ancient scriptures (because people venerated antiquity and found innovation suspect) BUT the Christians had to argue that they are monotheistic and distinguish themselves from the demonic polytheists.

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