Why I Wrote The Testament of Judas, Part II

(Just occurred to me that I hadn't actually gotten around to writing this one.)

So, there is a semi-serious* inspiration to the Testament of Judas that came to me while I was writing my dissertation on the Gospel of Judas, which is an actual 2nd-century Christian text. It falls into the broad category of Gnostic Christianity, along with many other texts, such as the Gospel of Truth, the Apocryphon of John, and such ilk. Now, one opinion among ancient Christian proto-orthodox heresy-hunters was that the Gnostic Christians were writing their own texts to supplant the texts of the New Testament** and create their own scripture. Not a few modern biblical scholars seem to hold the same opinion.

However, I think that's wrong. The Gospel of Judas was not written to replace the New Testament gospels - it was written as a commentary on the New Testament gospels (in this particular case, I think it's a commentary on a specific theme the author of Gos. Jud. sees in the Gospel of Mark). I think the same can be said for all the Gnostic Christian texts. The four Gospels, along with Paul's letters, were extremely popular texts amongst all types of Christians almost from the get-go; where the disagreements come in is in how to read those texts. It's all about interpretation.

So the author of the Gospel of Judas reads Mark, and latches onto the statements about the Twelve, and that inspires him to write his gospel to emphasize and reinforce a message he sees in Mark that he thinks has been ignored until now ("now" being the middle of the second century CE). That got me to thinking about how whole theologies can hang on how one reads a particular theme, or how one reads a particular verse, even, which is where the Testament of Judas comes in.

Matthew 27:52-53 was the verse I latched onto for my interpretation of the canonical gospels, the lens through which I reread Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (and a few other texts), interpreting that odd verse from Matthew as a zombie apocalypse. Obviously, there's a lot that gets left out when reading the gospels that way - there's no references to the Beatitudes in the Testament of Judas, for example, and many of the parables get left out as well. On the other hand, my interpretive lens has much more to hang on than, say, proponents of the Prosperity Gospel, because it's much harder to make Jesus look like a 21st century neoliberal economist than it is to make him look like an evil necromancer, based solely on verses from the New Testament.

Anyway, that's the semi-serious side to the Testament of Judas. Apologies for having you wait more than two years for the explanation.

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* Semi-serious, because really, it's a zombie apocalypse story about necromancer Jesus, how serious can it be?

** Or the texts that would become the New Testament, since it was a couple of centuries at least before the NT canon was settled upon by most Christians.

What is the Tipping Point?

From an article on Tucson.com:

Jacinto wore a yellow bracelet on her left wrist, which defense lawyers said identifies parents who are arrested with their children and prosecuted in Operation Streamline, a fast-track program for illegal border crossers.

I would like to think the yellow bracelet was an unthinking oversight, and that's halfway believable given how bad most Americans are at history, but it's too much of a coincidence.

I'm lead to wonder, how long until ICE detention centers become death camps? I mean, in one sense they already are, with the highest number of custodial deaths in nearly a decade and with the agency itself seeking to cover up evidence of its own crimes.

But with this administration's antipathy toward immigrants and ICE's flagrant disregard for both constitutional and human rights, there will be a point in time when some sort of order will be given, or implied, and the murders will begin in earnest.

At what point do we rise against it, and how? 

Bridging The Rachel Divide

We watched The Rachel Divide a few days ago, the new documentary about Rachel Dolezal that's on Netflix. She's a frustrating person to watch, because it seems clear to me that she really needs some therapy to address the root causes of her ethnic confusion. But she also seems to be the sort of person who really doesn't want to examine herself in any deep way. Therapy is often about confronting behaviors and beliefs about yourself that you're strongly attached to, no matter how damaging or untrue or wrong those beliefs may be. Rachel Dolezal doesn't want to confront herself.

If she had, this could have been sorted years ago. She grew up in a fucked-up conservative Christian household, one that held her in very low esteem. That fucked-up family decided to adopt black children (to "save them" from abortion) and she was given the task of reading up on "black culture," since the parents didn't seem to have any interest in these children beyond realizing their anti-abortion beliefs in a fucked-up kind of action.

Comparing the culture she was raised in versus the culture she was assigned to learn about, the former would certainly pale in comparison. I don't know what preachers or teachings her parents adhered to - the documentary is sadly lacking in that background material - but whatever they were, when set side-by-side with MLK and Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou and so on, it's easy to see why Dolezal would gravitate toward black culture and history rather than her own fucked-up heritage.

And she and her adoptive brothers and sister were abused by the parents and by her older (white, biological) brother. While she isn't always a reliable narrator, I have no problem believing the accusations of abuse, since abuse is part and parcel of the fucked-up conservative Christian culture her family was steeped in. So again, she would naturally be closer to, feel more connection with, her adoptive siblings.

White culture versus black culture, in her mind, becomes a struggle of evil versus good, and who wants to be evil? So she denies her own whiteness more and more, to the point that she ceases to self-identify as white, and only sees herself, only wants to see herself, as black. And no one called her out on it (though the documentary does interview black women activists who had doubts about her backstory) until a local TV reporter did some basic background on her.

If she had done some thorough soul-searching at that time, and laid all this out for everyone to see, I think much of the ensuing controversy could have been mitigated. I'm not saying the black community wouldn't still have had good reason to be angry at her, but her adoption of a black persona would at least have made more sense. But she was stubborn and doubled down on her self-identity, and continues to do so. I think it's a stubbornness born of fear, fear of actually facing herself and admitting where her "black" identity comes from, and acknowledging her actual, white heritage, and owning that as an important, if extremely painful, truth about herself.

As the documentary shows at the end, she will do anything to avoid facing herself and her past and how it has shaped her personality and history and the decisions she's made. She will never truly be free until she does.

Also, an apology to the black community for her past statements and behavior would not be inappropriate, to say the least.

Religions of Life, Religions of Death

In The Farthest Shore, Ursula Le Guin describes the afterlife of Earthsea as a land of perpetual shadow where nothing grows. It is a barren, rock-strewn plain that slopes down to an ever-dry riverbed, beyond which is a range of high mountains. Scattered throughout this expanse are towns and villages populated with the spirits of the dead – all the dead, regardless of their behavior during life, for the afterlife is not divided into Heaven and Hell in Earthsea. The dead wander about their towns, but they do nothing nor interact with each other, for in death there is nothing to be done. Nor do the dead feel anything, for there are no feelings in death. They are neither happy nor sad nor angry nor any other emotion. The dead simply are, for eternity.

Those familiar with Mesopotamian myths such as The Descent of Ishtar will recognize this vision of the afterlife. The underworld is nothing more than the land of the dead, where they consume mud and dust (Ged, Le Guin's archmage of Earthsea, says the dead drink dust, for there is no water in the afterlife, making it a sort of polar opposite to the living world of oceans and islands). In both Earthsea and Mesopotamia death is dreaded: Ged states that it is right to fear death, while even Ereshkigal, Mesopotamian goddess of the underworld, weeps for those she takes and laments the fact that she is as trapped as the dead. The reason the living should fear death is simple: it is the end of everything that defines life. All feelings and experiences, whether good or bad, cease at the moment of death, and the dead continue on in an emotionless eternity where nothing happens and nothing changes, because in the underworld nothing can ever change. Life is savored because it is only while alive that we can experience anything and everything, from pain to pleasure, joy and grief, happiness and anger. The key dichotomy between death and life can be boiled down to stasis versus change.

The western monotheisms, from Zoroastrianism up to Islam, alter the understanding of the afterlife and the realm of the dead by introducing the concepts of an eternal reward or an eternal punishment after death, which is to say, they split the land of the dead in two, creating Heaven and Hell. Where you end up after you die is no longer a certainty, and your final and everlasting disposition is dependent upon your actions and beliefs in this life. This revision of the concept of death is one of the worst things that could have happened to religion, not because it changes the meaning of death, but because it changes the meaning of life.

Under the ancient religions of the Near East life possesses ultimate meaning because it is the only thing we have, the only existence in which it is even possible to do anything and feel anything. Death, being the same destiny for all, is something to be avoided, not something to be dwelt on. This life is all that matters. But once death involves a choice of eternities it becomes the focus of all endeavors. Beliefs and actions in life no longer matter in themselves, their ultimate importance now lies in where they lead in the afterlife. Life under such a belief system loses ultimate meaning and is no longer lived for its own sake but for what happens after. Heaven and Hell crowd out other concerns, and worry over the final fate of your spirit prevents you from being fully present in this world right now.

This is Ged's lesson from The Farthest Shore – death may be feared, but rather than focus on the fear of death we must instead be present to life, because this is the only existence in which there is the possibility of joy, even if it is also the only existence in which there is the possibility of pain. While death is a dreadful state of being, to be caught up in the fear of death draws all the pleasure out of life. The empty underworld of death is inevitable and because it is unavoidable it is better to focus on living your life.

Death is as inevitable and eternal in the Near Eastern monotheisms, but because one end is desirable and the other is not death becomes transformed into life's focus. Unlike the life-centered beliefs of Earthsea and Mesopotamia, the monotheisms are death-centered traditions in which death becomes life's ultimate concern. This is most vividly exemplified in Christianity, where much attention is paid to Christ's death and resurrection – Easter being the major Christian holiday – while less attention is paid to what he did while he was alive, his teachings both in word and deed which he said are the keys to the kingdom. For many Christians it is this wholehearted belief in the dying-and-rising Christ that defines their religion, and sincerely holding on to this right belief is the means of escaping Hell. But the focus is still death, the focus is still, “I want to go to Heaven, I don't want to go to Hell,” rather than “I want to live life.” 

Perhaps what Christ meant when he said, “They know not what they do,” was his followers were going to misunderstand the meaning of his execution and look only to that event rather than live according to his teachings.

Servants of Death

Been thinking about school shootings and lockdown procedures in the wake of the Parkland massacre. I think about disaster/crisis scenarios a lot; the habit started after I saw Night of the Living Dead for the first time and ever since I have gauged how zombie-proof every building I've ever been in is. Aside from zombie apocalypse, I also try to plan what to do for real-world problems; I work part-time as a substitute teacher, so I've war-gamed active shooter situations in my head. In every classroom I think about what I need to do to secure it, where I need to be, where the students need to be. What I need to do, or try to do, in case a shooter breaches the room. I've never been in such a situation, obviously, I have no idea if any of the plans I've come up with would actually work. Nor do I know if in the event I would have the courage to do anything at all.

Here's the thing – I shouldn't have to entertain these thoughts. No teacher, no student, should have to entertain these thoughts. But there's an absolutely rabid obsession over guns and the supposed sanctity of the 2^nd Amendment in this country. There's a segment of the population that values gun ownership over lives. The 2^nd Amendment may have made sense when we were a young nation without a professional army, but times have changed, in ways the Founders couldn't possibly have imagined. Because of guns, we have far higher rates of murder and suicide per capita than any other first-world nation, and because of guns we live in terror of ourselves. We need to stop valuing guns more than children, we need to stop valuing death more than life, because make no mistake – those who value guns over people are the servants of death.

"Sacrifices" - Short Story Now Available

A short read (about 2300 words), available for free if you're a subscriber to Kindle Unlimited, otherwise it's .99¢ - cheap!

From the Amazon description: "The Bible tells us that after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, they had two sons, Cain and Abel, and that Cain killed his brother out of jealousy. But what if the first murder was committed for another reason? "Sacrifices" offers an alternate look at the first family, one that suggests a very different motive for Cain's act.

If you've ever read Genesis and asked yourself "why?" then this story is for you."

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The story was inspired when I was rereading Genesis (as one does), and came across a couple of details that don't match up about who gets to eat what at the beginning of time, as I have written about previously. That got me to thinking about the whole Cain/Abel story and seeking an alternate explanation for why Cain kills his brother. This also gave me the opportunity to rethink Adam and Eve's relationship and present it in (I hope) a more sympathetic light.

Why Do Fish - Fall From The Sky - Every Time - You Walk By?

I'm wondering what to make of all the accounts of "damned things" Charles Fort collected during his lifetime. ("Damned" because the scientific establishment in his day either completely ignored these events, or denied the validity of the reports.) Mostly I'm wondering why we don't hear of such things anymore. As far as I know, there's no cell phone footage of falls of fish or frogs, nor pictures of thousands of yellow and black worms upon a glacier.

(Such weird details in Fort's data, like he found multiple accounts of rains of frogs over the centuries, but never tadpoles. And lots of reports of worms on glaciers, or found after heavy snow.)

A cursory look at Youtube doesn't reveal any videos of these things actually falling from the sky, and the scientific establishment still says when it happens, it's due to waterspouts (which still doesn't answer Fort's question: why are the falls of animals always of a single species? Are the waterspouts discriminating in what they lift up?)

Fort had some odd suggestions as to why these sorts of things happened, including the possibility of "super-constructions" that periodically pass over the earth's surface and drop things. Also, that there's an area of null gravity some miles above the earth's surface, in which there are floating fields of ice and gelatin. (I do wonder how much he believed any of his own proposals; my impression is he didn't, really, but he didn't accept the received wisdom of the scientific establishment either.)

In any case, this sort of thing doesn't appear to happen much, if at all, any more. I think I know why.

Suppose the world as we know it is actually a simulation, one that has been running for a very long time. Perhaps all the unusual data Fort collected, all the "damned things" that could not be reconciled with scientific laws and known natural phenomena, were simply glitches in the simulation.

Why don't these "glitches" happen anymore? Whoever - or whatever* - is running the simulation has upgraded the system, replaced their hardware or software or both.

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* Fort also wrote, "I think we're property."