Readers Reply

006

BR’s Abdication

I have been struck by the disparity between the letters to the editor and the articles in BR. When I noticed that there was no editorial reply to charges from your readership of incompetence and dishonesty, I knew you had made it into modern times. This is exactly what non-Christian publications do constantly: print whatever they like, whether it makes sense or not, and then print letters to the editor stating whatever their authors like, also regardless of whether they make sense or not, and with particular disregard for whether or not the letters make any serious challenge to the articles.

BR’s message is clear: No one knows, nothing makes sense and the purpose of human intellect is to serve as a source of amusement. Don’t make up your mind. Express anything and everything. Never take a stand and risk your reputation on it. Let the public disagree, if they care to, and then print as many of their conflicting points of view as you like in Readers Reply without any rational refereeing by the editors to eliminate nonsense and to congratulate sense. These are your editorial guidelines.

By the way, you have no right to reply to this letter. Your editorial disclaimer of responsibility prevents you from doing so.

O.K. We won’t comment on your letter.—Ed.

Book of Job

Deconstructing Clines

I found David J.A. Clines’s “Deconstructing the Book of Job,” BR 11:02, a fascinating approach to the social setting of this text. What fascinated me most, however, was the social setting for Clines’s article as a text. The Sitz im Leben for such texts is left-wing academia with its paradigms of class warfare and the claims of the poor, women and minorities against prosperous men. An article purporting to be an exposition of the Book of Job turns out to be a propaganda piece for today’s politically correct agenda.

Without pretending to resolve the riddle of Job, I suggest an alternative approach: Perhaps the issue really is theodicy (justifying what God allows to happen) after all. The arguments of Job’s friends and Elihu, while rejected or ignored in the epilogue, are still part of the book’s logic. Semitic, or biblical, logic approaches a question not in the Western way (proceeding through a connected sequence of rational proofs) but by encircling the problem with arguments that may or may not be consistent with one another. If Job, his friends and Elihu can’t solve their problem, they can at least talk it to death. The “winner” is the one who is still around when the talking stops. Job is the winner only for a moment, since God has the last word; in this type of logic, the argument is settled by the voice with the greatest authority.

The reasoning of Job’s friends is thoroughly orthodox and is rebuked not for its content but for another reason: By presuming that God’s ways need defending, they demean God. Only Job has the patriarchal/prophetic nerve (cf. Abraham, Moses, Amos, Jeremiah) to argue with God, which shows he thinks God can stand on his own two feet, thank you. Therefore it is Job who has “spoken of Me what is right” (Job 42:7, 8) and to whom God responds.

Dead End

It’s interesting that at this late date BR should come up with “Deconstructing the Book of Job.” If this article is a good example of deconstruction, it is also a good example of why deconstruction is a 007dead end. If Clines, citing Frederic Jameson, really believes that all texts owe their existence to a desire to repress social conflict, then anyone who disagrees has, just by disagreeing, made himself guilty of trying to repress social conflict. The rest of us may be guilty of evading facts; but Clines is secure or trapped in an unassailable fortress of thought where no one can reach him.

Man’s Limitations

I found Mr. Clines’s article (“Deconstructing the Book of Job,” BR 11:02) about “Job” very interesting, but I think he misses the entire point of the book. To me Job says very clearly that it is all right to question God, but it is wrong to assume you understand and can explain God’s actions by human logic. Job’s friends do this and are forced to apologize (42:7). Job accepts his limitations (42:2) and is rewarded. Man is simply not equipped to understand God.

Comforted by Job

Why is there a Book of Job? asks David Clines (“Deconstructing the Book of Job,” BR 11:02). I can answer that question: Because God intended there to be. What is its effect on you as a reader? he asks. It has played an important part in my life. During a life of sickness and unhappy events, I could read it and take comfort in the fact that I am not alone.

Without it I might have thought God was angry with me. I have had experience with some of “Job’s Comforters.” Forgive me if I am inclined to think you, Mr. Clines, might be one of them.

As to women being neglected, as Mr. Clines suggests, I doubt that. We can always turn to Ruth or Esther or many other Bible women to know God did not forget them.

The Book of Job gives us insights into the ways of God and the power of Satan to accuse the righteous. I am always thrilled when I read God’s answer. I am now a great-grandmother to ten children. Their future is very important to me and I know they have a great deal to learn. I am sure the life story of Job has served a good purpose to millions of people down through the ages.

Job 28:28: “And unto man he said, Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.”

Developing the Soul

The deconstructive analysis of Job presented by Professor Clines (“Deconstructing the Book of Job,” BR 11:02) has real value in providing insights into the circumstances of the composition of Job. I am less sure of his article’s value in explaining why we continue to consult Job, age after age, when circumstances we can neither change nor explain tempt us to curse God and die. Just because we may suffer is no reason to abandon piety and justice. I believe this is what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn means when he says (in the second volume of The Gulag Archipelago) that “the meaning of earthly existence lies not, as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but…in the development of the soul.”

Job Learns to Bear the Weight of His Suffering

Had David Clines set himself to write the most extravagant possible caricature of political correctness and its perversion of scholarship, he could hardly have done better than his article “Deconstructing the Book of Job,” BR 11:02. Since the issue is the integrity of a text that is not only a work of literature of the first quality but, even more important, one of the critical stages in the development of western spirituality and intelligence, his argument must be addressed. Since that argument originates entirely in a modern critical theory without any contact whatever with evidence, I would prefer to try to restore some sense of what really goes on in the book.

A minimal literary imagination should identify how this book works. The meaning of suffering, particularly what appears to be innocent suffering, must have been a haunting question from the beginning of human awareness. At some point, a fine writer put together the ingredients of an ancient folktale with the answer to the question contained in our present prologue and epilogue. It is a masterful work—terse, powerful, eloquent. It establishes the issues clearly, with a response to the problem that still controls the minds and attitudes of a great many people and that even determines much of our present culture.

Later a supremely great poet-dramatist was haunted by this ancient tale in all its simple power; this happens frequently 008with, for example, Greek drama, Homer and Shakespeare. Such stories pose the question bluntly and directly, with answers unacceptable to a sophisticated intelligence. With an unerring instinct for dramatic authority, the poet kept the framework of the ancient story and simply cut out the body of the work; it is probable that the speeches of the friends were much like the present speeches. Job had believed what the friends believed but learned painfully that it was not true. With a fierce honesty, with absolute moral integrity, he fought against the dead weight of the past into a new awareness of the moral dilemma of being human. Very few characters in literature, including scriptures, have the power of personality, the breadth and depth of moral consciousness, that Job was forced into.

Then the crowning greatness of the book—the response of God. The poet-dramatist, with a singular genius, did not try to give an answer; there is no answer within the limits of human intelligence. Job had become the greatest of men, towering in his majesty. Then he was confronted by one greater than himself, incomparably greater, who nonetheless confronted Job directly, spoke to Job. The greatness of Job became humility, the power of Job placed within the divine order. Job had no answer to his anguished question. He was transformed by the presence of God into one who could bear the weight of his suffering.

What Clines Failed to Understand

“Deconstructing the Book of Job,” by David J.A. Clines, compels me to write even though I am not a scholar.

The article argues that the Book of Job is a rich man’s story—about a rich man, for a rich man, to be read by rich men. The argument is based on the notion that “the experience the poor have of the rich is, overwhelmingly, of oppressors…” This shows no understanding of hierarchical societies. Loyalties even today run vertically more readily than horizontally. An engineer in a modern company is much more likely to identify with a mail clerk or the company president than with the engineer from a competitive firm. Only tremendous sophistry and constant publicity can maintain horizontal cohesion based on equality of wealth or equality of social status, as in a trade union. I flatly reject the assertion that the poor do not know “of pious rich men.” It is much more common to assert that my boss, lord, king or whatever is good, true and noble while the other fellow’s is an immoral degenerate.

The article asserts that there is a social, gender and political need for the Book of Job. I submit rather that it is much more likely that the Book of Job supplies a necessary dramatic tension for the canon of scriptures as a whole. There is certainly an undercurrent throughout the Bible that piety, virtue and wisdom (for which Job was famed [25:21, 22]) bring material goodies. The Book of Job provides a counterweight to 009this trend by showing that the misfortune of losing a lot of material is not always the result of evil deeds. Hence, piety does not assure prosperity.

The article objects: “Finally, it persuades readers that it somehow answers the problem of suffering.” The Book of Job clearly declares that Job’s sufferings have a divine purpose, though Job is never told what that purpose is. In this case, Job’s sufferings allow God to prove to Satan that God blessed Job because Job was pious, not that Job acted piously because God blessed him. Understanding that our sufferings somehow fit within God’s plan is a comfort and a solution.

Not a First

I very much enjoyed David J.A. Clines’s article “Deconstructing the Book of Job,” in the April 1995 issue.

He is certainly wrong, however, in assuming that others have not noted the upper-class origin of Job and other Wisdom Literature.

See, for one example, chapter 3 of Robert Gordis’s Koheleth, the Man and His World, where Gordis gives full discussion of this subject in Job as well as in Ecclesiastes.

Lazarus

Foreshadowing the Resurrection

I thoroughly enjoyed “The Raising of Lazarus” by Robin M. Jensen (April 1995). As an artist myself, I’m greatly interested in early Christian symbology and art. Because mysteries are often conveyed in symbols rather than words, art has the potential to illuminate the beliefs of the earliest Christians. It appears that Ms. Jensen has done just that. Her interpretation of the Lazarus images as foreshadowing the resurrection of Jesus is highly plausible and her portrayal of Jesus as a wonderworker is refreshing because it is a perspective that is often neglected.

Jesus, Not Houdini

There might be an even simpler reason than those given by Robin M. Jensen for the appearance of a wand in Jesus’ hand in many of the early artistic representations of the raising of Lazarus. Noting that the wand is not mentioned in the biblical text, Jensen suggests that its addition indicates the early Christian perception of Jesus as a magician.

However, a close viewing of the art that accompanies Jensen’s article reveals the possibility that the wand is used in lieu of a halo as a definitive indicator of Jesus’ elevated status. This is particularly evident in the scenes on the ivory diptych that appear in Jensen’s article (“The Raising of Lazarus,” BR 11:02). Out of six depictions of Jesus’ miracles, four show Jesus with a halo. The remaining two use wands instead of halos. This same configuration–either wand or halo—can be seen in the other artwork used in Jensen’s article.

Robin Jensen responds:

Ms. Emery raises an interesting issue about the distinction between Jesus with a wand and Jesus with a halo in the fifth-century ivory diptych. The iconography on the diptych, however, is consistent with tradition, showing Jesus with a wand only when raising the dead or performing such miracles as multiplying loaves and fishes or changing water to wine at Cana. The pattern is broken in the image on the facing page, where Jesus is shown with halo and no wand when raising Lazarus.

The suggestion that wand substitutes for halo, however, is not supported by other evidence and rather should probably be viewed as a simple matter of chronology.

The halo is a relatively late addition to Christian iconography and is usually given to Jesus in less narrative, more portrait-like images beginning in the mid-fourth century. The wand, on the other hand, begins to be omitted from Christian iconography during the fifth century, probably because Christians no longer needed to make the point that Jesus’ magic was more potent than that of other magicians or deities of the Roman or Greek pantheons. Jesus’ wand is also more characteristic of western (Roman) iconography. The ivory diptych probably should be considered a transitional image.

While the wand only occurs in specific images of Jesus healing or working wonders, the halo, an indication of divinity, eventually becomes a common attribute of Jesus, Mary, apostles, saints and angels from the fifth century on. Thus the wand is not a substitute for the halo.

BR’s Columnists

010

Relieved of a Burden

After two years, my subscription to BR finally comes to an end, and I can now rejoice in knowing I will no longer have something that feeds doubt and unbelief in my home.

I am sure those many issues included worthwhile articles. After reading the likes of Marcus Borg and Jacob Milgrom and most of the major articles, however, it became clear that this is a magazine devoted to the so-called intellectual community, who view the created as somehow intellectually superior, or at least more rational, than the creator! I found I could not trust anything written in BR based on its core articles and editorial position. Always, it seems, BR endeavors to have the answer that God must have somehow missed. Most contributors are always seeking to find the answer that is rational or reasonable to man, man who the Bible itself makes clear has, since his creation, been rebellious, prideful and arrogant.

Biblical faith is not ignorant or blind faith, but it does require that we acknowledge that God is sovereign and His thoughts and ways are above ours. The message of the cross as many other of God’s messages are foolishness to those who cannot accept His sovereignty. As Paul so ably said: “Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1 Corinthians 1:20).

BR Brought Him Back to Church

This is both a response to Marcus Borg’s essay on homosexuality (“Homosexuality and the New Testament,” BR 10:06) and a thank-you note. I have always been interested in scriptural studies and have had a deep personal spiritual life. But for many years I felt ostracized by other religious people simply because I am gay and have been in a nurturing relationship for over 13 years.

A few years back I met a biblical scholar who rekindled my interest by guiding my reading in scriptural studies and theology. At about the same time I started reading BR and Biblical Archaeology Review. I found I could explore scripture with reason and continue to grow in my spiritual life as well. I also took the next step and returned to church activities and made many sympathetic friends. I have now been asked to teach Bible classes! Guess where much of my research starts? What an astounding journey it has been for me. I owe it in large part to your publications and to contributors such as Marcus Borg and Jacob Milgrom. Borg’s books have not only nurtured the scholastic side of my studies but have been a support for activism and in my prayer life. His picture of Jesus is very challenging and compassionate.

After all these years of support, I was thrilled to see their thoughts on homosexuality. It also seemed to be typical of your willingness to be in the thick of things. Being gay and active in a traditional church (Roman Catholic) is very difficult. One is criticized from every perspective. Thank you for all your generous attitudes. You assist people in their spiritual and mental growth much more than you may know.

What Scholarship Is All About

There is no such thing as a conservative Bible scholar! Those who deserve to be called “Bible scholars” start with the evidence, cherish it for its own sake, and tease out the most natural conclusions. The eye of the scholar is firmly on the evidence; the mind of the scholar seeks to make this evidence speak of ancient times and thoughts.

Those who start with a priori views, such as biblical inerrancy or Christian doctrine, who seek to hammer the evidence until it fits those doctrinal molds, are not scholars. They are apologists. The eye of the apologist is firmly fixed on the doctrines that must be defended; the mind of the apologist is forever wrestling with the evidence to make it fit the accepted molds. If that means ignoring the last 120 years of Bible scholarship, then so be it!

An apologist, of course, may occasionally rise to scholarly heights in areas that do not threaten preconceived doctrine. Others, made wise by years of experience and reflection, who are able to pitch most of their a priori baggage despite the heartfelt strings attached, may contribute much to the scholarly domain. Beyond that, the phrase “conservative scholar” is an oxymoron.

Give me real scholars, like Marcus Borg, who tease out the thoughts and times of the ancient authors, who tell it like it is. If I want apologetics, I can read a hundred lesser lights.

Jesus Seminar Beyond the Pale

As much as I appreciate many of your informative and valuable articles, I have to take issue with some of your regular contributors. The Jesus Seminar, with its discrediting of the New Testament claims of the true nature of Jesus Christ and the discounting of reports from the Synoptics and the Gospel of John, simply cannot speak for the great body of evangelical Christians. I understand that Marcus Borg belongs to the Jesus Seminar group. So it is not surprising to read his views about the significance and meaning of Jesus’ death in “How Did Jesus Die for Our Sins?” (April 1995).

Borg states, “For a number of reasons, it is unlikely that Jesus saw his own purpose as offering up his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.” Yet one of the most quotable passages from the Synoptics reads, “For the Son of man also came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). And in John 12:24, Jesus is quoted as saying, “Truly, truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” And we should not leave out St. Paul’s “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve (1 Corinthians 15:3–5).

I think I am in agreement with a few million fellow Christians who do not see any rationality in ascribing these basic teachings to a long development. In the middle of the first century, Paul was affirming the same things which the writers of the Gospels were saying a few years later in gathering what they knew, not what they speculated about from hearsay or tradition. I suspect that few readers of BR are ready to accept the idea that the Good Friday and Easter narratives are really a labored metaphorical interpretation of the tragic death of their revered leader, and the resurrection a series of subjective experiences to offset the reality that death after all has the last 045word! How far all that would be from the Good News so exuberantly declared in Acts, Paul’s letters, Hebrews and First Peter! Let the Jesus Seminar people take off their blinders and see reality for a change!

Marcus Borg responds:

I wish to make three points in response to Mr. Kohlstaedt. This first is his implication that membership in the Jesus Seminar is sufficient in itself to discredit one’s historical judgments. “Bashing” the Jesus Seminar has lately become common, reaching its height (and depth) in Time magazine’s story on miracles (April 10, 1995). As a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, I simply do not recognize the group described in Time’s irresponsible report. Our “sin” is that we do not see the Gospels as straightforward historical documents but (in common with mainline scholarship) as the developing traditions of early Christian communities in the decades after Easter.

Second, what separates Mr. Kohlstaedt and me is precisely these two different views of the Gospels. The verses he cites are among those that I see as most plausibly the voice of the community after Easter.

Third, in my opinion, making the truth of the statement “Jesus died for our sins” dependent on whether Jesus saw the purpose of his death to be a sacrificial offering for sin weakens rather than strengthens the statement—because it is unlikely that Jesus saw his death this way. Moreover, it implies a view of God that I find incredible: that God can forgive sins only if adequate sacrifice is offered, that this can happen only through God’s Son becoming the sacrifice, and (as it usually follows) that people can be forgiven only if they believe this. It seems to me that we discredit the Christian understanding of God if we insist that this is literally true.

Finally, what Mr. Kohlstaedt and I share is a conviction that Christianity is true; what differentiates us is how best to make that claim.

A Sacrifice by Any Other Name…

Regarding Marcus Borg’s “How Did Jesus Die for Our Sins?” BR 11:02: Am I to take Borg’s phrase about Jesus’ death demonstrating that we have “immediacy of access to God, apart from any institutional monopoly” literally? Or is this just a 20th-century academic metaphor for “Jesus died for our sins”?

Potpourri

Jesus Chose a New Symbol

What both Bruce Chilton (“The Eucharist—Exploring Its Origins,” BR 10:06) and Bernhard Lang (“The Eucharist—A Sacrificial Formula Preserved,” BR 10:06) as well as their apologists and detractors (see Readers Reply, April 1994) all fail to point out clearly is that Jesus chose not the Passover lamb—that ageless ante-type of himself—but simply the bread of their last meal along with the wine, to be the symbol of his sacrifice…not the offering first offered by blessed Abel, but the one offered by cursed Cain!

What is one to think of that? A deep mystery yet!

Bruce Chilton responds:

Geraldine Stahl-Pollat’s letter is brilliant. Her acute observation permits the discussion to move into a deeper level of analysis. Her remark illuminates two lines of investigation that were part of the groundwork of my article. First, sacrifices have a regular connection to patterns of eating, so that Abel’s sheep are preferred to Cain’s produce in Genesis 4, and Jesus’ last meals prefer wine and bread on the table to blood and flesh in the Temple. Such changes of sacrificial pattern, in the pragmatic questions of what is consumed by whom and under what circumstances, are richly attested in the anthropological literature. (I review that literature in my book The Temple of Jesus [Penn State University Press, 1992], and develop a general typology of sacrifice on that basis.) An alteration in what is consumed reflects an alteration in the total pattern of the sacrifice.

Second, it is entirely correct that Jesus’ last meals did not embrace the pattern of Passover: that was an innovation introduced by James, Jesus’ brother (Matthew 26:17–20//Mark 14:12–17//Luke 22:7–14). The variety of eucharistic patterns (which my article refers to) shows us clearly that no one circle of Christianity invented the Eucharist: Why would James have borrowed from Paul, or Paul from James? The fact that circles in dispute over many matters agreed that the Eucharist represented a meal in which Jesus spoke of wine and bread as blood and flesh shows that Jesus 046himself was at the generative moment of eucharistic practice.

And so it is quite true to say that there is a mystery involved in Jesus’ choice of sacrificial offering and in his refusal of the pattern of Passover. What is happening is that a meal is being transformed into a sacrifice, a new purity is delineated, God is pleased by a fresh approach to his throne. It is a shame that those whose minds are fixed on only one brand of eucharistic theology (usually developed sometime after the 16th century) cannot permit themselves to see how Jesus may have thought about it. But Geraldine Stahl-Pollat, at least, seems to have no problem: She may even lead other readers out of their Reformation blues.

Don’t Even Try to Probe the Mind of God

As an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, I am among the last to presume to question the opinions of an eminent biblical scholar on biblical matters. At the same time, I cannot help but wonder at the apparent presumption of Ronald Youngblood’s explanation of what God meant when He commanded wholesale bloodshed in the conquest of Canaan (Readers Reply, April 1995). Yes, we know the Canaanites were idol worshipers and that they had to be displaced to fulfill the promise of the Israelite occupation of the region. From our historical perspective, however, it seems reasonable to equate Joshua’s romp through Canaan, killing every human (“man, woman and child”) to what we used to call a holocaust and now refer to as “ethnic cleansing.” I do not have the chutzpah to disagree with the Deity on his decisions.

Nevertheless, like Dean L. Freeland (Readers Reply, April 1995), I wonder what He had in mind when He commanded Saul, through Samuel, to: “Attack Amalek and deal with him and all he has under the ban. Do not spare him, but kill men, women and children and infants, oxen and sheep, camels and asses” (1 Samuel 15:3). I won’t even raise the issue of children and infants, but “oxen, sheep and camels”? Were the livestock Canaanites too? I certainly don’t know what God intended but I don’t think that Dr. Youngblood’s apologia satisfactorily answers Dean Freeland’s question.

Ronald Youngblood responds:

It is understandable that Dr. Amato finds it difficult to accept my “apologia” for divinely ordered “wholesale bloodshed in the conquest of Canaan.” But I can assure him that my “explanation” was not written in a spirit of “presumption,” whether “apparent” or otherwise. In addition, I fully share Dr. Amato’s commendable reluctance to exercise the “chutzpah” it would take “to disagree with the Deity on His decisions.” In fact, my deep respect for the Bible and my confidence in its full and uniquely inspired truthfulness compel me to approach it in a spirit of sensitivity and, I hope, humility—a spirit that I often fail to communicate with anything like the clarity I would like.

At the same time, our ability to answer satisfactorily the kinds of questions posed by Dean Freeland and Dr. Amato is severely hampered—by our finite humanness. The Bible tells us that the Canaanites (and others; see Amos 1—2, etc.,) were destroyed because their sins were an abomination and an outrage in the eyes of God; that everything that breathed (whether human or animal) often fell under the divine ban (Leviticus 27:28–29; Deuteronomy 13:12–18; Joshua 6:17); and that God’s instruments of judgment were not themselves exempt from judgment when they broke their covenant with him and committed the sins of the condemned (Judges 2:1–5; 2 Kings 17:7–23). Perhaps our inability to explain matters of this sort is at least partially due to our tendency to adopt the Greek dictum that man is the measure of all things rather than the Hebrew concept of an awesome, absolutely holy God who cannot countenance the enormity of sin (Genesis 6:5–7) and who, in his infinite wisdom, reserves for himself the sovereign right to do as he pleases (Psalm 115:3) with everyone and everything he has created.

In any event, wars in the ancient Near East almost always had a religious dimension, and the battlefield was an arena of divine retribution. That animals were included in the total destruction that warfare usually brought is only to be expected in a culture that took for granted divinely-authorized animal sacrifice (for the expiation of sin as well as for other reasons). Saul’s refusal to obey the divine command, mediated through the prophet Samuel, to kill all of the Amalekite livestock was unacceptable to God and prophet alike, and Saul’s lame excuse (1 Samuel 15:15) brought an appropriately prophetic rebuke. On the whole subject of “holy war” in the Hebrew Bible see the cautious and sensitive treatment of, among others, John W. Wenham, The Enigma of Evil: Can We Believe in the Goodness of God? (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1985), pp. 99–101, 119–125, 165–168.

A Pulverized Ant a Day Keeps the Doctor Away

Pinchas Amitai’s article “Scorpion Ash Saves Woman’s Eyesight” (April 1995) was of particular interest to me. Last November, I had occasion to visit the Joseph Caro Synagogue in Safad, Israel. The synagogue, in the midst of a hasidic village, was founded in 1500 A.D. While browsing in a bookshop adjoining the synagogue, I bought Wondrous Healing of the Wise Kabbalists, by David Lustig. This booklet describes numerous methods of using powerful natural materials and medicines for healing purposes as described in the ancient writings of the Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides (1135–1204). In addition to scorpion ash, the remedies include pulverized ants, cooked bark from olive trees, juice of rose petals, resin from pine trees, meat of deer, rabbit, frogs and wild donkey, ashes from various leaves and plants and sea salt. It made interesting reading on the flight back home.

From the Sublime to the Radicchio

As a long term subscriber, I always look forward to your excellent magazine and begin reading it immediately. Don’t you dare change a thing. However, I would like to make a few comments in regard to the article “How Did Adam and Eve Make a Living?” (April 1995) by Frederic L. Pryor and Eleanor Ferris Beach. Like those who try to fit the first creation account in Genesis to the modern scientific understanding of earth history, the authors may be stretching things a bit; after all, the Bible was written by a pre-scientific culture and its stories are poetic, mythic (in the religious sense), intuitive, symbolic, left-brain creations rather than factual, scientific, literal, right-brain reporting; but it is amazing that parallels seem to exist. One is almost tempted to think there was a greater and more subtle mind working beyond the immediate authors and cultures that produced the text!

I would take one minor exception with the authors and suggest that the anthropologists’ data do not suggest that humans were always carnivorous. For most of our half million years as a species, our diet was probably similar to our cousins’, the chimpanzees’, almost entirely vegetarian. Like them, we supplemented it with a bit of meat when we 047could, but it has only been for the last 20,000 years that we have had the tools to hunt efficiently. Until then we were more gatherer-scavengers than hunter-gatherers. Further, if we look at our anatomy and physiology, we find that we have no adaptations for meat eating. We are clearly designed for living in the garden, not in our post-deluvian world. Our modern excessively carnivorous diet is now known to be very unhealthy, destructive to the environment, socially unjust and ethically questionable. The model of our ancestors as “killer apes” is a myth (in the popular sense). We would all do a lot better to get rid of this popular myth and return to the religious one by living in the manner we were created for back in our “salad days.”

Frederic L. Pryor responds:

Ms. Kalusa is incorrect in believing I was trying “to fit the creation story in Genesis to the modern scientific uunderstanding.” Instead, I intended simply to examine these parallels in order to ask new questions of Genesis.

Too Smart For Your Own Good

I do not, as many others do, feel it a necessary part of Christian maturity to read articles that attempt to cast doubt on everything I find sacred and holy.

You people who are “well educated” go to great extremes in your attempts to take something so simple (faith) and filter it through man’s intellect to the point that it’s so difficult that the smartest of the smart can’t figure out or determine it to be true.

Thanks but no thanks! Have a nice day.

Spare Me Your Blasphemy

Again and again, during the several years that I have received BR, I have read dreary articles by self-styled “scholars” who have nothing in common but their lack of faith. I am supposed to read gullibly and patiently while your writers attack the Virgin Birth and turn it into a blasphemy. This is not scholarship, this is simply lack of faith seeking to justify itself.

No, I will not renew.

BR’s Abdication