Announcing a Meeting to Discuss a Non-Religious Group Within the Society of Biblical Literature
Read this announcement below. Come join us.
Dear colleagues,
As the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) approaches, some of us have discussed the possibility of forming a group that would approach the Bible from a strictly non-religious viewpoint. Although no single mission or purpose has been established yet, some our objectives could be to:
1. Promote scholarship of the Bible from a non-religious viewpoint.
2. Produce scholarly critiques of religionist biblical scholarship, and how it functions to maintain the authority and value of the Bible in the modern world.
3. Form a counterweight to the Evangelical Theological Society, and perhaps engage in cordial dialogue and debate with its members through written formats and through joint sessions.
You are free to propose any alternatives, or add your own, to our proposals at that meeting. We can send out a more specific agenda about a week before the meeting begins.
If you are interested in discussing the viability of such a group within the SBL, or alongside the SBL, please join us on [note new date] Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 6:30pm at the Marriott Hotel. Feel free to contact us at the e-mail addresses below.
Sincerely,
Hector Avalos (HectorAvalos@aol.com)
Jim Linville (jimlinville@shaw.ca)
Ken Pulliam (pulliam@mail.com)
John W. Loftus (johnwloftus@verizon.net)
Dear colleagues,
As the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) approaches, some of us have discussed the possibility of forming a group that would approach the Bible from a strictly non-religious viewpoint. Although no single mission or purpose has been established yet, some our objectives could be to:
1. Promote scholarship of the Bible from a non-religious viewpoint.
2. Produce scholarly critiques of religionist biblical scholarship, and how it functions to maintain the authority and value of the Bible in the modern world.
3. Form a counterweight to the Evangelical Theological Society, and perhaps engage in cordial dialogue and debate with its members through written formats and through joint sessions.
You are free to propose any alternatives, or add your own, to our proposals at that meeting. We can send out a more specific agenda about a week before the meeting begins.
If you are interested in discussing the viability of such a group within the SBL, or alongside the SBL, please join us on [note new date] Saturday, November 21, 2009 at 6:30pm at the Marriott Hotel. Feel free to contact us at the e-mail addresses below.
Sincerely,
Hector Avalos (HectorAvalos@aol.com)
Jim Linville (jimlinville@shaw.ca)
Ken Pulliam (pulliam@mail.com)
John W. Loftus (johnwloftus@verizon.net)
10 comments:
I don't know enough about the SBL to know whether or how such a group could work, but I sympathize with your aims. I've written more about it here.
Let's face it - the bible is a fantastic set of material (in both senses of the word ;-), and as a Christian Atheist, I find it fascinating, in terms of content, evolution, propaganda, politics and the rest. Establishing it as an atheist sourcebook is a great idea, as is promoting a rational sensible approach to it.
So I support this idea thoroughly. I will try to put some stuff on the Christian Atheist page http://churchofjesuschristatheist.blogspot.com
When we become atheists, we don't need to give up our culture, or cede bibliological fun to the fundies. Nor do we need to get all "emergent" or post-modern.
Shane -- Is your project similar to Sherwin Wine's Humanist Judaism?
Not quite - I'm not suggesting a humanist/atheist "splinter church" - more a "compatibility layer" to allow people to remain in their existing churches, but be true to their (lack of) beliefs, and influence the churches in a positive way. It's not accommodationist either (or at least I don't see it as such). Thoughts welcome :-)
After doing this for a couple of years now, it seems to me that Anthropology and a comprehensive study of cultures, migrations, changing environment and language from 10,000 BCE to 400 CE from Africa, asia minor, central asia and southwest asia is necesary. Look at the rising of the oceans after the last ice age for example, and the rising salinity of the soil in mesopotamia, the changing path of the Indus river, etc, etc, etc. These phenomena cause people to move and they take their ideas and language with them.
If Juadism didn't come from God, it was derived from raw material available during the period.
The levant where Judea and Israel were located were in the center of trade routes between the Indo-european family of language speakers to the north and east and the Afro-asiatic language speakers to the south and center.
Ideas are transmitted by language and are isolated until they are translated, and even then the language that is receiving the idea from the language it originated from may not be sufficient to describe it properly. Anyone that is bilingual should know what I mean immediately. Any English speaker that knows the difference between learning spanish or french and learning Chinese or Japanese should know what I mean immediately. The underlying logic and grammer between the Indo-eurpoean language family and the asian language families is very different.
There is clear evidence of Egyptian, and indo-aryan ideas embedded in Judaism and christianity. As a result, you can find clear parallels in Ancient Egyptian religion and in older Hinduism. The concept of Rita in Vedic religion is very similar to Logos from Greece, though they surround the near east and are relatively far away from one another, they are are derived from the same language family. Everyone talks about the "hellenism" of Judaism but no-one seems to recognize that some of the influence pre-existed presumably because they are only looking at the data sufficient to support their hypothesis. A quick way to get to greece from persia (Iran) is through Asia Minor (turkey). Central Asians were herders. Always looking for a place to feed their animals. I say put your hypothesis on the back burner and go where the data leads you. Obviously Judaism wasn't given by god anymore than any other religion, but it wasn't created in a vacuum either.
I'll shut up now and go back to tracking who spoke what when and what their scriptures said.
In fact, one more thing, if you commit to the idea that abraham came from UR, and that Paul lived in the area of Asia Minor, and you track the languages being spoken around that time frame in that path, you can see that it tracks the border between the Indo-european languages and the afro-asiatic. So it makes sense that you'd get the egyptian and sumerian "man made from clay" myth mixed in with the "god lives inside us" from indus valley in judaism, and God as a Man in christianity. Those ideas already existed and predate judaism and more importantly are preserved in ancient texts as evidence.
oh, yea,
I forgot to mention the clear similiarties between the early depiction of Shiva (vedic era), Enki (sumarian) and the life of the Hindu/buddhist in the fourth stage, John the Baptist, Jesus and his apostles.
Wild men living in the forest, wanderers, yet serving mankind in some way (healing for example).
Lee, these are important issues; we have known for a long time that Palestine was a melting pot of ideas and cultures - the monoculture of the "Israelites" was a myth, and even in the time of Jesus, it was quite a cosmopolitan place. There are indeed multiple threads of other, older, cultures embedded in the bible - after all, the source myth / folklore collection that we call "Genesis" was compiled at a time when Babylonian and Egyptian influence were strong.
I don't agree with some detractors that the compilers of the Torah were ignorant goat herders - they were highly literate, highly intelligent people, and the fact that we have this corpus is quite remarkable, and should be studied and treasured (but not idolised of course).
Hi Lee Randolph its always real interesting the way you explain how these things could have possibly came about.Thanks very much for taking the time to do so.
I always feel kinda sick when ever groups that have any connection whatsoever to religion get mentioned.
Im thinking for me its most likely because of the nightmare i personally experienced.Almost kinda like how some folks really dread dentists, calling them murder houses etc.Feeling like they going to faint or die without first being knocked out with some type of anaesthetic L.o.L .
But sure if folks are going to learn more about stuff its gotta be good.Specially if stuff like what Lee mentions get talked about more,im sure it would really be interesting.And if it at the Marriott Hotel well there must be some anaesthetic available to sooth the nerves.
Sadly it might be a little far away for me to come along though.If it wasnt so far away i wouldnt miss it.
Hi Gandolf,
no problem,
its called syncretism.
information is like molecules.
information is subject to entropy just like molecules.
in the same way your kitchen takes on the smell of whatever is cooking, then diminishes over time taking on another smell, so does a repository for information, be it a person, a culture or a database.
In order to prevent entropy in information systems (comparing cultures and humans to information systems), "data cleaning" has to be performed where the unwanted information is discarded.
in language studies its called symantic drift, in complex social systems its called practical drift, but in general terms, its just deviance in the standard that creeps in to dilute, corrupt, contaminate, whatever you want to call it, in any case it produces new characteristics of whatever the object of interst is.
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