Book Write-Up: The Gods of Olympus, by Barbara Graziosi

Barbara Graziosi.  The Gods of Olympus: A History.  New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014.  See here to purchase the book.

Barbara Graziosi is a scholar in classics.  The Gods of Olympus concerns views about the Greek gods throughout history.

Here are some items:

A.  Graziosi’s prose in this book is vivid and compelling.  It was like reading an Elaine Pagels book: I am being provided with important background information for understanding the field, but with a narrative that discusses the motivations of the characters.  An example of this is Graziosi’s profile of the gods and goddesses in the Parthenon frieze (fifth century B.C.E.).  So many classics books are dry, and this book is a refreshing exception.  I thought that the sections about the Renaissance and the twentieth century were a little more elliptical, though.

B.  What interested me about Graziosi’s discussion of the fifth century B.C.E. was the theological struggles and questions that occurred in that time.  Some of them were familiar to me.  I took a class on Pagan Allegory a while back, and I learned about how Xenophanes believed that the gods in Homer behaved in ways that were beneath their divine dignity, and that contributed to the emergence of allegorical interpretations of Homer.  In Graziosi’s book, I learned that others were questioning the existence or behavior of the Greek gods in the fifth century B.C.E., in plays and histories.  Thucydides, for example, questioned the wisdom of relying on gods for assistance, for he talked about a city that was pious and did no wrong yet was conquered, notwithstanding its appeal to the gods.  There were also philosophers who promoted what they considered a higher conception of the divine than what was conveyed in Greek mythology: a pantheistic god, or a single god who was unlike humans.  (Graziosi cautions, however, that what we believe about Xenophanes’ thought is largely from later Christian sources, which portrayed him as a monotheist.)

C.  The contrast between the Greek gods and the biblical God was in my mind as I read this book.  The God of Judaism and Christianity is eternal and created the universe.  Zeus and Hera were not eternal but were the offspring of Kronos and Rhea, who themselves were the offspring of the union of heaven and earth (Ouranos and Gaia).  Hera was jealous of her husband’s multiple affairs and persecuted Zeus’ offspring; the biblical God, by contrast, did not engage in affairs.  While the Greek gods were, on some level, amoral, in apparent contrast to the biblical God, there were gods who valued wisdom (Athena) and truth (Apollo).  A lot of this is basic Greek mythology, but it was good for me to be reminded of these concepts, plus Graziosi built on them.

D.  Occasionally, Graziosi mentioned scholarly shifts in opinion.  Many of the prominent Greek gods were worshiped earlier than scholars previously assumed, in second millennium B.C.E. Mycenaean sites.  Graziosi also notes that the marginality of a god is no indication as to whether the god is early, late, or authentically Greek.  Homer marginalized Dionysus, but Dionysus was worshiped as far back as the second millennium B.C.E.; Homer’s problem with Dionysus was the god’s drunken excesses.  Apollo, by contrast, was a prominent Greek god, yet he was “a rather late addition to the Greek pantheon, had no obvious Indo-European credentials, and was at least partly Semitic in influence, identified early on with the Canaanite god Resheph” (page 20).

E.  Graziosi discusses the Roman embrace of the Greek gods, as Romans incorporated the common mythology in an attempt to enhance and preserve their power and influence.  In a number of cases, the Romans already had equivalents to the Greek gods, though there were differences between them.  The Roman gods were responsible and had the function of helping people in their tasks and responsibilities, whereas the Greeks had a colorful mythology about their gods.  Jupiter was “a rather impersonal protector of the Roman republic,” and the “other major Roman gods—-including Juno, Mars, Minerva, Venus, and Mercury—-were also invested primarily with civic responsibilities and were surrounded by a crowd of minor gods who were even more functional and faceless” (page 129).  The Roman god Mercury was respected, whereas the “Greek god Ares…was a crazed, bloodthirsty character despised even by his father Zeus” (page 133).  The Roman embrace of Greek mythology allowed the Romans to develop a more rounded portrayal of their own gods.  Some gods, such as Apollo, had no Roman equivalent and were solely an importation from the Greeks.

F.  Graziosi discusses the political use of the Greek gods.  Alexander the Great and others  conveyed that they were literally sons of a god—-that a god impregnated their mother.  The view of Euhemerus that the gods were once human beings was used by the Romans to argue that human authorities would later become gods.

G.  Graziosi discusses Christian stances towards the gods.  Constantine became a Christian, yet idols remained in his empire, and Eusebius offers the unbelievable explanation that Constantine allowed them so they would be an object of mockery.  A number of Christians regarded the Greek gods as demons.  Graziosi observes on page 177: “Written sources suggest that as statues deteriorated, the demons inside them underwent a subtle change of personality.  Initially seen as extremely dangerous, they eventually became only mildly sinister, and some of them turned out to be demonically useful.”  Such uses included serving as talismans, “averting minor calamities such as rat infestations or heat waves,” or informing writers of important current events.  This stood out to me.  Playing with the occult can be dangerous, but not everyone who worships pagan gods or participates in the occult becomes afflicted or demon-possessed.  Some do, though.

H.  On pages 151-152, Graziosi narrates the transformation of Cleopatra’s image.  Cleopatra was Greco-Macedonian, a worshiper of the gods of Olympus.  But Octavian, who was in conflict with Cleopatra, claimed that the gods were on his side and portrayed himself as “an upright officer determined to uphold traditional Roman values of duty and moderation.”  To contrast himself with Cleopatra, therefore, he depicted her as a native Egyptian, a worshiper of sensual, grotesque, and animal-like gods.  As Graziosi observes, this image has survived: “Virgil, Shakespeare, Liz Taylor, and countless others through the ages have presented Cleopatra as a ravishing Egyptian beauty, though the portraits made during her lifetime suggest a different picture: in those she looks Roman and quite bland.”

I.  On page 213, Graziosi contrasts medieval Christian art with Renaissance art: “Christian art could be emotionally demanding: it inspired worship, humility, horror, gratitude, sadness, ecstasy.  Beautiful naked nymphs dancing in the woods were much easier, not only on the eye but on the heart as well.  It was all right simply to sit back and enjoy them without asking too many questions.  Those nymphs did not matter much, after all.  Unlike suffering martyrs or the Holy Virgin, they did not even exist.”  I like relaxation, but I also like art that makes me think.  The latter kind of art makes me feel that I am not wasting my time.

Wanderlust: The Parable of the Prodigal Son, Star Trek, and Philo

At church this morning, the pastor preached about the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). Earlier in the service, there was a skit about the parable.

The pastor made a point about the parable that overlaps with other themes that I have encountered this week. The themes relate to happiness and struggle.

The pastor was saying that the younger brother of the parable obviously had wanderlust. Granted, the younger brother took that wanderlust in inappropriate directions. Still, his desire to experience new things and to see the world was understandable. In the skit, the younger brother was reading a National Geographic, commenting on how he wanted to see the world. The pastor speculated that the boy’s father may have envied the boy: the father may have wanted to see the world himself, but he could not because he was taking care of the farm.

The pastor also commented on the older son, the one who dutifully stayed behind with his father. The older son was expecting to inherit the farm, and he resented the younger son coming back and being welcomed with open arms. According to the pastor, the older son may have had tunnel-vision because he had not seen the world, as the younger son did.

The pastor said that maybe God has given us wanderlust, since that is what motivates us to explore and to discover. The pastor referred to the astronaut who recently returned to earth.

The pastor said other things about the parable, things that are more conventional in sermons about it. But I am focusing on the wanderlust part because it is a topic that has been in my mind over the last few days.

Last night, I saw an episode of Star Trek entitled “This Side of Paradise.” In this episode, there is a planet where there is radiation killing off life, and yet the people there are alive, healthy, and happy. The reason is that spores from certain flowers are giving them that perfect health and happiness. Spock is hit with the spores, and he gets a feeling of happiness and belonging. He can finally love a woman who loved him six years before.

But Captain Kirk thinks that this state of affairs is unnatural and dangerous. Because people are healthy and happy, they are not progressing. They are not discovering, inventing, learning, and growing. They are not struggling, which is what brings about growth and progress. They do not have wanderlust, for they are perfectly content where they are. Kirk does not think that humans are supposed to be in this state of paradise.

It turns out that extreme negative emotions can counter the soothing effects of the flowers. After Spock is returned to his old self, Spock tells the woman who loved him that everyone has a self-imposed purgatory to endure. At the end of the episode, Spock comments about the time when he was under the influence of the spores. Spock says that this time was the first time in his life when he was happy.

Later, I was reading Philo’s Special Laws II. Philo was a first century Jewish exegete. In Special Laws, Philo gives his opinions about the meaning and significance of the laws of the Torah. Special Laws II focuses on the biblical festivals. The first festival that Philo mentions is every day. Philo says that every day is supposed to be a festival. Every day, we are to find joy by contemplating nature and God.

While the “Side of Paradise” Star Trek episode seemed to place joy at odds with struggle and discovery, Philo believed that they coexist. Contemplating the world and God are part of joy, so Philo does not divorce happiness from learning. Yet, because of how we are and how the world is, we often find that attaining and maintaining joy is a struggle. We have to struggle with our passions and our sinfulness, which undermine our joy. We have to deal with a world where things do not always take place as we want. Echoing Stoicism, Philo advocates lowering one’s expectations so that life’s disappointments are not as hurtful. Philo believes that humans can arrive at a state of happiness, but that, ultimately, God is the only one who is perfectly happy.

Speaking for myself, I can identify with the people on the planet in the Star Trek episode. So what if they never built skyscrapers? They were happy and content. Why did Kirk have to take that away from them? At the same time, I have to admit that discontent and internal desolation do get me off my rear end. They motivate me to learn, to try, to grow, to search. And then sometimes, like Spock, I try to make due with my own self-created purgatory. Ultimately, I land where Philo is: I try to be happy, but I seek a happiness that coincides with learning and growth.

A Comparison of Philo's Special Laws I with the Epistle to the Hebrews

I recently finished Philo's Special Laws I for my daily quiet time.  Yesterday, I moved on to Special Laws II.  Philo was a first century C.E. Jewish thinker in Alexandria, Egypt.  He interpreted the Torah in light of Greek philosophy.

Special Laws I largely focuses on the sacrifices within the Torah.  In going through Special Laws I, I thought about the New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews.  In this post, I would like to draw some informal comparisons between the two.

A.  For Philo, the animal sacrifices are largely symbolic of the way that people should be, spiritually-speaking.  The sacrifice is a symbol for the person offering it.  The sacrifice is to be perfect, and that symbolizes how the person offering it is to be perfect: free from the slavery of human passions and appetites and clearly and rationally seeing God in God's beauty.  The offering of the sacrifice represents the worshiper offering himself to God.  Philo even calls a person's righteousness a mediator between that person and God.  Philo also says more than once that people need to approach God in a state of virtue, free from sinful attitudes (i.e., covetousness). 
 
In the Epistle to the Hebrews, by contrast, the focus is more on how the sacrifices prefigure Christ's cleansing of people.  Christ is the fulfillment of Old Testament sacrifices.  Christ also intercedes for believers as a high priest, one who knows their weaknesses because he himself was a human and was tempted as they are.

At the same time, one cannot take this observation in the direction of saying that Philo supports people saving themselves by their good works, whereas Hebrews is about God in Christ saving people by grace.  Philo acknowledges that God transforms people, which is an act of divine grace.  Philo realizes that even perfect people are not sinless, for nobody is perfect.  Philo states that there are sacrifices that bring about forgiveness of sin.  Philo knows that the high priest is an intercessor for worshipers, and he believes that the high priest is an intercessor, in part, on account of his virtuous life.

Themes like divine grace and forgiveness are not absent from Special Laws I.  It's just that Philo's focus is on how the sacrifices symbolize how human beings should be, spiritually-speaking.  Hebrews, by contrast, like much of Christianity, tends to focus on how humans are sinful and need a perfect sacrifice to bring them acceptance from God.  The sacrifice is not the human being, so much, as it is something perfect that brings salvation to the sinful human being.

And yet, the Epistle to the Hebrews does not limit its understanding of sacrifices to atonement.  Hebrews 13:16 states that doing good and sharing with others are sacrifices to God.  (I should also note that Romans 12:1 exhorts believers to offer themselves as a living sacrifice.  This can remind one of Philo's belief that many of the sacrifices represent people offering themselves to God.)  Hebrews also has ethical exhortations about doing good and avoiding evil, so Hebrews does believe in trying to be virtuous, as Philo does.

B.  The Epistle to the Hebrews has scary passages about apostasy.  According to Hebrews, one can get to the point where one cannot sincerely repent, even if one wants to do so.  One can sin willfully, which is different from sinning out of weakness.  In Hebrews, willful sin after a person has learned the truth results in there being no more sacrifice for sin for that person.

In Special Laws I, I did not see anything about apostasy.  Philo does talk about God's grace transforming people, and that stood out to me after I read John Piper's comments on Hebrews 12:14-17.  Hebrews 12:14-17 states:

14 Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord:
15 Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled;
16 Lest there be any fornicator, or profane person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright.
17 For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears.
(KJV)

John Piper states regarding this passage in his article, "Has My Sexual Sin Made Me Unsavable?":

There came a point where God withdrew from Esau. This meant that Esau was so hardened in his heart that even his weeping in search of repentance was phony at the root. He sought repentance with tears and they were fake. They weren’t penitent tears. He couldn’t cry real tears of repentance anymore. His tears were not true. He wanted the blessing. He wanted the safety. He wanted the gifts. He wanted the inheritance. He wanted heaven. But he did not want God. He loved this world. He traded something infinitely valuable for a single meal.

When I read Piper's comments here, I wondered why God could not transform Esau in Esau's state of spiritual helplessness.  That is why Philo's statement about God transforming people stood out to me.

At the same time, near the end of Special Laws I, Philo takes a rather exclusivist stance.  Philo states that certain people should not approach the virtuous God.  Deuteronomy 23 excludes certain people from entering the congregation of the LORD: people with crushed testicles, or those born from fornication.  Philo in Special Laws I interprets this spiritually: God excludes people who are so enamored with their senses and their faculties that they forget God.  That attitude somewhat overlaps with what John Piper says Hebrews is saying about Esau.  The question would still be, however, if Philo believes that there is hope for such people, or if he thinks that one can arrive at a state of spiritual hopelessness.

C.  The Epistle to the Hebrews interacts with the concept of intentional and unintentional sin in the Torah.  In the Torah, there is atonement for sins committed unintentionally, but death for sins committed presumptuously (Leviticus 5; Numbers 15:27-31).  The Epistle to the Hebrews seems to draw from this concept: for the author of Hebrews, there are sins committed from weakness or out of ignorance, and these can be atoned for.  But sins committed willfully, and after a person has learned the truth and been enlightened, may not be atoned for.  See here for a post that I wrote on this topic.

Philo, too, interacts with the concept of intentional and unintentional sins.  Like rabbinic Judaism (Babylonian Talmud Yoma 86b; see here for other references), Philo in Special Laws I holds that repentance can convert an intentional sin into an unintentional sin, making the sin forgivable. 
 
D.  One can conclude that the Epistle to the Hebrews believes that the physical Temple is null and void after the coming of Christ.  After all, why offer sacrifices at the physical Temple, when its sacrifices could not really take away people's sins in the first place, and the fulfillment of those sacrifices, Christ, has come?  Why go to the Temple when Christ's sacrifice brings about forgiveness of sins?

One may wonder, though, if Philo, too, believes that the physical Temple is superfluous.  Philo, after all, thinks that the Temple rituals symbolize the spiritual life: becoming virtuous and seeing God.  If a person can do these things apart from the physical Temple, is the physical Temple actually needed?

Philo in Special Laws I still seems to believe that the physical Temple plays an important role.  He thinks that the virtuous priests intercede for the people.  He also believes that the Israelites offering sacrifices and giving offerings brings physical and material blessing to the Jewish people: they preserve them and help things to go well in their lives.  For Philo in Special Laws I, the physical rituals are important, even if they symbolize something deeper. 

Never Again; Philo's Ascetic Preference for Bread; Mentoring on Grocery-Shopping

I have three items for my write-up on this morning's church service.  The first items two relate to things I have recently watched and read.

A.  In the children's part of the service, the pastor was continuing his series on the Lord's prayer.  The pastor was talking about the part of the prayer that says "Give us this day our daily bread."  We pray for God's provision each day.

I was thinking about a movie that I watched last week.  I've been watching the Love Comes Softly movies on Trinity Broadcasting Network.  In the movie Love's Abiding Joy, there is a land baron named Samuel Doros, who is taking people's land.  Doros tells the story of when he was a poor child and was continuously hungry.  He could find food in those days, but he could never enjoy it because he would be wondering where his next meal would come from.

You would think that such an experience would make him more compassionate towards those who are struggling, as opposed to trying to take their land.  But the experience did the opposite to him: it made him so bitter about life and insecure that he tried to eek out from people whatever money he could.

B.  The pastor was noting that Jesus told his disciples to ask God for bread, not cake.  I am not sure why the pastor was making that point.  He did say that bread is healthier.  In the sermon, he talked about his own recent struggles with dieting.

I've been reading Philo of Alexandria's Special Laws for my daily quiet time.  Philo of Alexandria was a first century C.E. Jewish thinker in Alexandria, Egypt.  He interpreted the Torah in light of Greek philosophy.  In Special Laws, he tries to explain the laws of the Torah.  Mostly, he seeks practical reasons for the laws being as they are.  There are times, though, when he seeks an allegorical explanation.  Special Laws is different from his esoteric works, in which his primary focus is on allegorizing the Torah.

In Special Laws I, Philo is talking about the sacrifices.  In I: 171-174, he is explaining why there are loaves of bread in the sanctuary.  One of his answers is that bread is simple.  He contrasts bread with "high seasonings, and cheesecakes, and sweetmeats" (C.D. Yonge's tradition).  Philo has a negative attitude towards the latter.

Philo is rather ascetic.  Heaven forbid that people want to gratify their fleshly tastes!  Their mind should be on higher things!  What is ironic, though, is that Philo does talk about God blessing people with abundance when they obey God.  And he talks about abundant celebrations, which occur at Jewish festivals.  Philo is ascetic, but he has to deal with that stress on abundance in the Torah.

C.  Someone from the local food bank spoke to us.  She told us stories about people who lost their jobs and had difficulty finding work.  In some cases, they have children.  There was also an elderly couple that was raising their grandchildren, and that was going into their retirement fund.  The husband was a truck driver, but he could no longer drive as many miles on account of his age.  They are benefiting from the food bank.

The lady was also telling us that the food bank offers lessons on nutrition and how to shop for food economically.  That may initially sound patronizing and condescending, but, believe me, such mentoring is good.  She said that the food bank does this so that people are not intimidated when they go shopping for groceries.  I can understand that being intimidating.  Stores have so many options.  A person may want to know how to get more for his or her money.  There's also the issue of buying food that can make a person full: whole wheat bread may be more expensive, but it will make a person more full after eating it than white bread (that's my insight, not what the speaker said).

Book Write-Up: Philosophy in Seven Sentences, by Douglas Groothuis

Douglas Groothuis.  Philosophy in Seven Sentences: A Small Introduction to a Vast Topic.  Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2016.  See here to buy the book.

In Philosophy in Seven Sentences, Christian philosopher Douglas Groothuis discusses the thought of seven Western philosophers.  Groothuis focuses on seven quotations.  The quotations (in whatever translations Groothuis is using) are as follows:

Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things.”

Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Aristotle: “All men by nature desire to know.”

Augustine: “You have made us for yourself, and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in you.”

Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.”

Pascal: “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

Kierkegaard: “The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.”

There were things in this book that I already knew, from my undergraduate education and personal reading.  But I did learn things that I did not previously know (or know too well), such as Pascal’s emphasis on knowing apart from analytical reason and Kierkegaard’s views on the self.

The book is a decent introduction to Western philosophy.  It gives details about the seven philosophers’ lives and their significance within the history of Western philosophy.  Overall, it summarizes and interacts with their thought clearly, though a few passages may require a little more concentration on the part of the reader (i.e., in my case, brief passages in the chapters on Descartes and Kierkegaard).

Perhaps the most endearing quality of the book is how Groothuis brings himself into the discussion.  He talks about his teaching experiences, his students’ reactions to some of the philosophers, the philosophical insights he particularly loves, and his experiences as a student.  He writes with a sense of humor.  He evaluates the quotations from his Christian perspective, yet he appreciates each philosopher and tries to understand the philosophers on their own terms (though he largely disagrees with Protagoras).  Groothuis’ book is introductory, yet he clues readers in about the larger discussions and debates within the academic community.

Groothuis’ tone was pleasant, as if he were offering readers things to think about rather than dogmatically trying to force them to believe a certain way.  I think of the final chapter in which Groothuis is discussing what he gains from the insight or perspective of each philosopher.  He disagrees with Protagoras because, if all we have are ourselves and our own perspectives, can we rise any higher than ourselves?  Good question.

There were occasional times when I winced a bit.  Groothuis was talking about the law of non-contradiction and was using that to argue that we cannot say that all religions are right, or that no religion is wrong.  True, but can one embrace some form of religious pluralism while still believing in the law of non-contradiction?  Groothuis says that Socrates at times referred to God rather than a specific god.  I was not sure what Groothuis was implying in saying that: Was he implying some overlap between Socratic thought and Jewish/Christian monotheism?  The Greeks often spoke of God in the singular, while still believing in many gods.  Groothuis may have done well to have included an endnote explaining this phenomenon.

I am still trying to wrap my head around at least one point that Groothuis makes.  Groothuis raises the question of whether Descartes has undermined empiricism.  Empiricism states that “all knowledge is based on our experience of the space-time world of objects, events and processes” (Groothuis on pages 89-90).  In essence, under empiricism, knowledge is gained solely through one’s senses of the outside world.  But Descartes claimed that he arrived at a truth through reason alone, apart from the senses: “I think, therefore I am.”

Of course, one could say that there are still truths that people gain through the senses, and even that some knowledge that certain philosophers believe are ascertained purely by reason (a priori) actually have their roots in sensory experience (i.e., I believe 1+1=2 because I have seen examples of that in real life).  But Groothuis, perhaps like other philosophers, believes that the debate is more absolutist than that: if one can find any example of knowledge that is not empirical, then that undermines empiricism, which claims that all knowledge is empirical.  Is self-consciousness an example of knowledge that is not empirical?  I wrestle with that, somewhat.  Granted, I am not aware of my thoughts or my existence specifically through the five senses, even though what I learn from the five senses does provide things for me to think about.  Would I say, then, that “some knowledge is given to the self apart from the outside world” (page 90)?  Maybe, but self-consciousness is pretty basic, isn’t it?  Groothuis also refers to Noam Chomsky’s view that “basic structures of grammar are innate”, as in “hard-wired” into us (page 93, Groothuis’ words).

Although Groothuis is more advanced than I am in the academic study of philosophy, I was comparing what he said with my own experiences in philosophy and religion classes, and that was enjoyable.  Groothuis criticized how some philosophers focus on Descartes’ skeptical discussions while ignoring how Descartes tries to get people out of skepticism through a belief in God (i.e., one believes in a good God who does not deceive us but places us in a knowable world).  Groothuis later talked about an atheist professor who ignored spiritual aspects of philosophers’ thought: Kierkegaard’s Christianity, or Hegel’s belief in a world spirit.  Fortunately, I had an atheist philosophy professor who did not ignore the spiritual dimension to philosophy.  She did not find Descartes’ argument for the existence of God to be convincing, but she did appreciate the dilemma that Descartes was presenting: either there is solipsism, or a God who makes a world that is knowable to us.

I would like to offer a few areas of disagreement with Groothuis, primarily on matters of taste.  First of all, Groothuis laments that the TV show Dexter is popular, for it heroizes a serial killer.  Contrary to what may be Groothuis’ understanding, the show is not really saying that people can do whatever they want, whenever they want.  Dexter does wrestle with a moral code, which requires him only to kill murderers.  Second, Groothuis does not care for Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz.  I love that book, even though I would agree with Groothuis that it falls short of Augustine’s Confessions!

Groothuis says in an endnote that he may write a similar book about the Eastern philosophers.  I look forward to reading it!

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Book Write-Up: On the Historicity of Jesus, by Richard Carrier

Richard Carrier.  On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason to Doubt.  Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2014.  See here to buy the book.

(UPDATE: See the comments under Vridar’s post.  There may be areas in which Carrier already addressed in his book some of the concerns that I have, or Carrier’s argument may be different from how I was conceptualizing it. On the other side, see Steve Hays' comments on my post at Triablogue.)

Richard Carrier is a Christ mythicist, one who does not believe that Jesus existed in history.  He has a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University.  Most biblical scholars reject his view.

For Carrier, the earliest Christian belief was that Jesus came from heaven to outer space and was crucified by malevolent spirit entities, then he was resurrected and returned to the highest heaven.  Carrier maintains that such a scenario is in the Ascension of Isaiah, which Carrier dates to the first-second centuries C.E.  For Carrier, such a scenario is consistent with, and makes better sense of, details that are in the earliest New Testament writings: Paul’s writings, Deutero-Paul’s writings, Hebrews, James, and elements of Acts.  These writings do not explicitly say that Jesus was crucified by flesh-and-blood human beings, and many of them rely on personal revelation and interpretation of Scripture, not historical events, in presenting their picture of Jesus.  Relying on personal revelation can be chaotic, however, as different people can appeal to their own personal revelations from the divine.  Consequently, according to Carrier, there were Christians who historicized Jesus, placing Jesus in a historical context.  They relied on alleged testimony from and connection to historical apostles who supposedly knew Jesus, not personal revelation, to buttress their authority.  (UPDATE: Neil Godfrey disagrees with this particular characterization of Carrier’s argument in his comment here.)  For Carrier, the Gospels and Acts reflect a belief in Jesus as a historical person.

I would like to wrestle with some of Carrier’s arguments.  This post will not be comprehensive, but it will wrestle with key points that Carrier makes in his book.

A.  Carrier does ask good questions.  Why do so many first century extrabiblical sources fail to mention Jesus or Christianity, if Jesus existed in the first century?  Why does Paul so often fail to mention aspects of Jesus’ life and teaching?  Why did Epiphanius (Panarion 29.3) and rabbinic sources (Carrier cites BT Sanhedrin 107b; Sotah 47a; JT Hagigah 2.2; Sanhedrin 23c) mention a view that Jesus lived during the time of Alexander Jannaeus, which was a century before the historical Jesus supposedly lived?  For Carrier, this is an indication that early Christians differed on where to put Jesus in history, which would be odd, had Jesus been historical.  Why does Origen, when he is discussing extrabiblical sources for Jesus, fail to refer to Antiquities 18:63-64, which is where Josephus supposedly talks about Jesus’ miracles and crucifixion, and the early Christian belief in his resurrection (Origen, Against Celsus 1.42, 47)?  For Carrier, that is one indication that this passage was not authentically by Josephus but was a later Christian interpolation.

B.  On why first century extra-biblical sources fail to mention Jesus, many would respond that they would not mention a backwater Galilean peasant.  Why not, though, if Jesus was as famous as the Gospels say he was (Matthew 4:24; 9:26, 31; 14:1; Mark 1:28, Luke 4:14, 37; 5:15)?

C.  Yet, the failure of so many extrabiblical sources to mention Christianity raises questions in my mind rather than convincing me of mythicism.  Even Richard Carrier appears to believe (or to grant for the sake of argument) that Christianity existed in the first century C.E., even if he does not believe there was a historical Jesus.  Yet, Carrier notes that so many extrabiblical sources fail to mention Christianity.  Augustine himself seemed to struggle with the question of why Seneca the Younger failed to mention Christianity in his first century work about sects in Rome (Augustine, City of God 6.10-11).  Why did so many first century sources fail to mention Christianity?  Was it because Christianity was obscure, or not well-established yet, or kept to itself?

D.  There are sources that Carrier mentions that, in my opinion, are open to interpretation.  Did Ascension of Isaiah, in its earliest form, really say that Jesus was crucified by malevolent spirits in outer space?  Or could it have believed that the malevolent spirits (or a malevolent spirit) killed a historical Jesus through human agents on earth, which is what is suggested in the Gospels, and in the so-called “pocket Gospel” in Ascension of Isaiah 11 (which Carrier believes was a later addition, and which is absent from some manuscripts)?  I can see how Carrier is arriving at his interpretation, but there seem to be things in the story that pull in the opposite direction (i.e., Christ is in the corruptible world).  On the story that Ignatius mentions about celestial activity during the time of Jesus, is that story implying that Jesus only existed in the heavens and never came to earth, or does that story suggest that Jesus came as a human (Ignatius, To the Ephesians 19; Carrier offers two interpretations of that part about Jesus appearing in human form)?

E.  Carrier argues that there were Christ mythicists during the time of the church fathers.  His implication may be that, had Jesus been historical, there would have been more consensus among Christians about that.  I do not see strong evidence for there being Christian Christ mythicists during the time of the church fathers.  Ignatius may have been arguing against Docetists, who believed that Christ was on earth but only appeared to be human (yet, Carrier questions whether we know this about the Docetists for sure).  Irenaeus in Against All Heresies 1.30 is talking about Gnostics, who believed that Jesus was on earth.  Both are consistent with seeing Jesus as a historical figure.  At the same time, Carrier also refers to a dispute between the non-Christian Jew Trypho and Justin Martyr about whether Jesus was made-up (Dialogue with Trypho 8-9).  Trypho there is a non-Christian questioning Christian claims about Jesus, not a Christian Christ mythicist (not that Carrier is suggesting otherwise).

F.  Carrier offers his own interpretation of passages that have been cited to argue that Paul believed in a historical Jesus.  Some of what Carrier said was plausible, or, at least, I cannot say that the interpretations are impossible (i.e., the Jews and Greeks of I Corinthians 1 are offended by the cross because it is based on personal revelation and not anything substantive).  Some of what Carrier said took me aback.  For example, Carrier interprets Romans 10:14 (“How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?” KJV) to mean that Paul did not think that Christ historically came to the Jewish people, for the Jewish people had not heard of Christ.  That, of course, would differ from what the Gospels present.  Is that what Paul is saying, though?  Romans 10 does not deny that Christ came to the Jewish people, even if it may be implying that there were still Jewish people who needed to hear about Christ.  I also wonder about certain passages, doubting that they fit with Carrier’s scenario.  Galatians 4:4 says that Christ was born of a woman and made under the law.  Carrier says that Christ could have been born of a celestial woman, but can a celestial being be under the law of Moses?  Wouldn’t only a Jew be under the law?  (On Christ being from the seed of David in Romans 1, Carrier says that David’s seed could have been fashioned into a celestial being.  On Christ being a second Adam in Romans 5, Carrier may interpret that in light of the ancient Jewish belief in a heavenly man, which Philo talks about.  On James being the Lord’s brother in Galatians 1, Carrier says that means James was a Christian, and Paul is calling him the Lord’s brother to differentiate James from the apostles.)

G.  Carrier says that there are parallels between Christ and mystery cults, and also between Christ and Romulus (for which Carrier cites Plutarch, Romulus 27-28).  One can perhaps quibble on details: there is debate about how or whether Romulus even died, and thus it may be hasty to say that he was resurrected.  At the same time, there are parallels: Romulus does ascend to heaven, appear to people thereafter, and talk about a kingdom.  On the mystery cults, there may be similarities between mystery cults and Christianity (i.e., a suffering god, a meal, perhaps some esotericism), but there is at least one difference: Christians in the New Testament do not keep the Gospel a secret but spread it throughout the world.  Also, since even Carrier believes that the early Christians were Jews, I wonder if Jews were in mystery cults.  That would be relevant to the question of whether mystery religions influenced Christianity.  Of course, Judaism was influenced by Hellenism, so I am not overly sympathetic with Christian apologists who imply that Judaism was in a pure container sealed off from paganism, or that pagan views would not enter Judaism.  But Bruce Metzger argued that one reason Christianity was not influenced by mystery religions was that mystery religions were not really a phenomenon in Palestine. (UPDATE: Godfrey says that Carrier already discussed Jews in mystery cults in the book.  See also Bee’s comment about Hellenistic influence on and Greek presence in Palestine.)

H.  Is Jesus’ name too good to be true?  What do I mean by this?  The name “Jesus” relates to salvation, and, lo and behold, Jesus in Christianity is a savior!  I can somewhat understand Carrier’s argument that this makes Jesus look made-up: do things work out that neatly in real life?  It’s not impossible, I guess, but likely?

I.  On a related note, there is the high priest Joshua in the Book of Zechariah.  Joshua is a priest, maybe even a king.  He is associated with the removal of sin in one day.  Satan afflicts him.  Carrier says that Joshua in the Book of Zechariah was a celestial priest, and that Philo associated Joshua with the divine logos.  Carrier may believe that these things set the stage for Christianity (or at least relate to Christianity), for the name Joshua is the same as the name Jesus, and things are being said about Joshua that were later said about Jesus.  Carrier may be hasty in saying that the high priest Joshua was a celestial priest, or that Philo believed in a divine logos named “Jesus.”  Still, is it a coincidence that things were said about Joshua in the Book of Zechariah that were later claimed about another Joshua, namely, Jesus?

J.  A final item.  Some Christian apologists argue that Christianity was true because Christians would not make up a doctrine about a crucified savior, since crucifixion was stigmatized in the ancient world.  As Carrier notes, however, people were offended by the castration of Attis (Augustine, City of God 6.10-11), but that does not mean that Attis was actually castrated.  People can believe offensive doctrines; that does not mean the doctrines are true.  Some Christian apologists make a big deal about Matthew 28:17’s acknowledgment that some people saw the risen Jesus and still doubted, heralding the apparent honesty of the Gospel writer, and thus his authenticity.  But, as Carrier says, Plutarch said that people had doubts about Romulus’ ascension.  And yet, in the latter case, what was Plutarch’s agenda?  Plutarch often sifts through different sources and makes judgments.  The Gospel writers, however, are faith documents, and perhaps they were more dogmatic than Plutarch was; consequently, their admission of doubt may have a different significance than what is in Plutarch’s book on Romulus.

Carrier covers other topics: Tacitus, Pliny, Papias.  But I will stop here.

David Marshall on Bart Ehrman's Comparison of Jesus in the Gospels with Apollonius

http://christthetao.blogspot.com/2015/12/bart-ehrman-scams-his-students.html

Note: I don't endorse the post's provocative title, but the post itself is an informative evaluation of Ehrman's argument.

Meghan Henning: Views on the Afterlife in the Time of Jesus

http://www.bibleodyssey.org/people/related-articles/views-on-the-afterlife-in-the-time-of-jesus.aspx

Book Write-Up: How Jesus Became God, by Bart Ehrman

Bart D. Ehrman.  How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee.  New York: HarperOne, 2014.  See here to buy the book.

How did Jesus, a Jew from a monotheistic culture, come to be seen by his followers as God?  Bart Ehrman, a biblical scholar who was once a conservative Christian and became an agnostic, tackles this question in How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee.  

Ehrman argues that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet who may have believed that he would soon become the Messianic king of Israel.  Jesus envisioned a heavenly figure known as the “Son of Man” (who appears in I Enoch) coming to earth soon, overthrowing evil and establishing Paradise, and setting up Jesus as the king of Israel.  After Jesus was put to death by the Romans, thereby shattering his disciples’ hopes that he would be the Messiah in any conventional sense of the term, some of Jesus’ disciples saw visions that convinced them was Jesus was still alive.  As that belief gained steam, early followers of Jesus concluded that God had exalted Jesus to a divine status after Jesus’ death, meaning that Jesus was still the Messiah, but that he was enthroned in heaven and would return to earth.  According to Ehrman, there was also an early view that Jesus had pre-existed his time on earth, that he was an angel who became a human being, then was exalted to a divine status.  For Ehrman, these ideas about Jesus are understandable in light of Greco-Roman, and also Jewish, ideas about divinity.  Both Gentile and Jewish culture contained the idea that a man could become divine, and that a god or an angel could assume a human form (which Ehrman acknowledges is different from an incarnation).  Within Hellenistic Jewish literature, there is the notion that an aspect of God could be personal, or that God had a divine intermediary (a logos, or wisdom), and Ehrman contends that these themes could be relevant to how Jesus came to be conceptualized.  Ehrman also explores Christology after the time of the New Testament, as he goes through Justin Martyr, Novatian, Tertullian, and others.  In Ehrman’s picture, views once considered acceptable (i.e., the idea that Jesus was exalted to a divine status after his death, and the view that the pre-existent Jesus had a beginning and was subordinate to God the Father) came to be considered heresy within Christianity.

This book has been critiqued and analyzed numerous times in the blogosphere and in print, and my write-up here will not be a thorough critique, though I will say that I find Ehrman’s scenario to be plausible and sensible.  While I have read a number of reviews of the book, I am glad that I finally read the book itself.  Ehrman is a gifted writer, who is able to make scholarly debates accessible to a popular audience.  I myself have academic training, but, as a reader, I appreciate when someone is able to summarize issues and phrase them in an accessible, friendly, lucid, conversational, and enjoyable (yet not corny) manner, while still providing documentation from primary sources.  Ehrman’s personal stories certainly enhanced the enjoyability of the book for me as a reader, for they showed how Ehrman’s research fit into his journey, particularly his journey in relation to religion.  The book also provided me with useful information about conceptions of divinity in the Greco-Roman world.  I have read about this topic in non-popular scholarly works, but Ehrman summarized the issues very lucidly, while giving examples of what he was discussing.

The book is not just related to Jesus’ divinity and monotheism, for Ehrman also participates in debates about whether Jesus’ resurrection is historically authentic.  In my opinion, Ehrman’s best argument with regard to this issue is his argument that all sorts of people—-even groups—-have seen visions, and that some Christian apologists are overreaching when they claim that early Christian visions of the risen Jesus demonstrate the truth of Christianity.  Regarding Ehrman’s argument that Jesus after his crucifixion probably was not buried, I refer readers to Greg Monette’s post about this subject, which critiques Ehrman’s argument through appeal to primary sources.  When Ehrman addresses the question of whether historians can say that Jesus rose from the dead, his discussion is a mixed bag.  Ehrman does well to make the point that saying that Jesus’ resurrection is not subject to historical investigation is not the same as saying that it did not happen; on the other hand, he seems to believe that historians should prefer naturalistic explanations as more likely than supernatural ones.  Personally, I would say that the farthest even believing scholars can go, from a historical standpoint, is to argue that Jesus’ tomb was empty, that the disciples saw visions that convinced them that Jesus rose from the dead, and that certain naturalistic ways to account for this fall short; I agree with Ehrman that going further and saying that Jesus rose from the dead is faith, not history.  In terms of what historians can say about this issue, I think that they would do well to say that it is a mystery.

Ehrman also makes points that are relevant to the question of whether the Gospels reflect eyewitness testimony.  Ehrman believes that there are some things in the synoptic Gospels that probably go back to the historical Jesus, and he endorses the conventional scholarly criteria of authenticity as ways to discern this.  At the same time, Ehrman also thinks that, after people saw visions of the risen Jesus, they started telling stories, and stories got invented and exaggerated, resulting in the oral tradition that is behind the Gospels, which (according to Ehrman) were written decades after the time of Jesus by anonymous people, not the people to whom they are ascribed.  (As Ehrman asks, would Aramaic-speaking Galileans produce the refined Greek works that the Gospels are?)  On eyewitness testimony, Erhman refers to non-Christian claims to eyewitness testimony: viewings of Romulus ascending to heaven; the claim that Apollonius’ miracles were attested by an eyewitness; and sightings of UFOs.

Moreover, while scholar Richard Bauckham argues in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses that the Gospels telling certain people’s names is an act of referring to them as eyewitnesses, Ehrman refers to an article by Bruce Metzger (whom conservative scholars love to quote or appeal to on other issues), “Names for the Nameless,” which was in Kyriakon: Festschrift Johannes Quasten, volume 1, pages 79-99.  Ehrman summarizes the article as follows: “Here he showed all the traditions of people who were unnamed in the New Testament receiving names later; for example, the wise men are named in later traditions, as are priests serving in the Sanhedrin when they condemned Jesus and the two robbers who were crucified with him” (page 155).  (See my post here about how Bauckham addresses this sort of issue.)  Ehrman here is not directly responding to Bauckham, but rather Ehrman is seeking to account for the development of the tradition that Joseph of Arimathea buried Jesus, especially since an arguably earlier tradition said that the Jewish leaders as a group buried him (Acts 13:28-29); for Ehrman, we may be seeing the literary practice of naming a character.  While Ehrman in this book does not explicitly interact with Bauckham, Ehrman’s points may be relevant to Bauckham’s argument, and I am looking forward to Ehrman’s coming book that more explicitly tackles the question of whether the Gospels reflect eyewitness testimony.

I’ll stop here.

Book Write-Up: A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion

Gary M. Burge.  A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion.  Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Academic, 2015.  See here to buy the book.

Gary M. Burge teaches New Testament at Wheaton College.  A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion is a historical fictional work about a Roman centurion in the time of Jesus.  On many of the pages, Burge provides a box that contains historical background information.  Burge also includes a helpful glossary of the characters at the beginning of the book.  The Roman centurion is named Appius, and he has a slave named Tallus, who is a covert Jew.

Here are some items:

1.  Appius was kind to his slaves, but Burge states on page 89 that a Roman head of a household “had complete authority over his slaves and could sell, punish or even kill them, since laws respecting persons did not apply to them.”  This is significant in debates about the issue of slavery in the New Testament, since the New Testament seems never to condemn slavery, and there are even New Testament passages that encourage slaves to submit to their masters.  Pro-slavery Christians prior to and during the American Civil War appealed to such passages to justify slavery.  A number of Christian apologists in recent times have responded to this apparent moral problem in the New Testament by saying that slavery in New Testament times was not as bad as slavery in antebellum America.  Burge may disagree with them, for he states that Roman masters in New Testament times had absolute authority over the lives of their slaves, who were not even treated as people under the law.

Burge may be correct when it comes to particular times in Roman history.  There may be more to the story, however.  Christian apologist Glenn Miller, for example, argues here that there were times when Roman society tried to protect slaves, or thinkers within it promoted the protection of slaves.  I Peter 2:18ff. exhorts slaves to submit to harsh masters, and I remember a professor of an Epistles of Paul class saying that the author here is trying to discourage slaves from challenging abusive masters in court.  If my professor was correct, then society back then at some point must have had legal means to protect slaves.

2.  I referred in my post here to a debate between atheist Richard Carrier and Christian apologist David Marshall about whether Christianity is reasonable.  Carrier asked why Jesus, if he were God, did not teach people in the first century rules of hygiene, which could have prevented numerous deaths.  Burge talks about hygiene in this book.  He says on page 51 that the “ancients did not understand germs, and the connection between hygiene and health would not appear until the late Roman period when soap use for cleaning the body became common.”  Yet, on page 134, Burge states that the Jews had laws in the Torah promoting hygiene.  My understanding is that the first century C.E., the setting of this book, is before the late Roman period, the time that Burge says that the connection between hygiene and health appeared.  Moreover, a number of scholars have held that the Hebrew Bible’s purity laws do not relate to health or hygiene but rather to ritual purity, and Burge himself appears to make this very point on page 115.  Although my impression is that Burge contradicts himself on the topic of hygiene, I did find his discussion informative, especially after watching that debate between Carrier and Marshall.

3.  Burge’s depiction of the Asclepius cult stood out to me due to debates about healings in the first century C.E.  I recently read atheist scholar Robert M. Price’s The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man, and Price discussed Jesus’ healings within the context of the testimonies about miraculous healings at Asclepius cults.  Some scholars and apologists have argued, however, that Jesus’ healings were unusual in his first century context (and perhaps more likely to be historical because they were discontinuous from Jesus’ context).  They say that what went on in first century paganism was medicine, not miraculous healing (see here and here).  In Burge’s book, the physicians at the Asclepius cult perform practical surgery rather than miracle, even though the cult has sacrifices to enlist the help of the gods.  At the same time, on page 134, some Jewish characters distinguish between their view on healing and that of the pagans, whose potions and incantations those particular Jews dismiss as magic.

4.  While I am on the Asclepius cult, I did find Burge’s depiction of first century pagan religion to be fascinating.  There was an appeal to the gods, but there was also an appeal to fatalism if things did not work out.  When a surgeon at the Asclepius cult is treating Appius for a wound that Appius received in battle, the surgeon says that “if he dies, it will be a course already set by the gods” (page 46).  In my opinion, Burge should have included a box explaining this feature of pagan religion, but the comments in the books about the gods were still informative and interesting.

5.  Burge depicts tax collectors collecting taxes for Rome in Galilee, while also stating that taxes went to the ruler of Galilee, Herod Antipas.  My understanding (and I am open to correction on this, after I turn my blog’s comments back on in the future) is that the Romans did not collect taxes directly from Galilee.  The Romans collected taxes directly from Judea because they had direct rule over it after 6 C.E., but, in Galilee, they had a client ruler, Herod Antipas.  Perhaps one can reconcile all this by saying that Antipas still paid tribute to the Romans, and Antipas was collecting taxes from Galileans for that tribute.  See my post here.  In any case, I do think that Burge should have provided a little more clarity or historical information about this topic, even though he did provide informative background information about Herod Antipas.

6.  Burge distinguishes between how Palestinian Jews and Diaspora Jews regarded Gentiles.  In his telling, Palestinian Jews tended to view Gentiles as ritually unclean and held that Gentiles could not be in certain areas of the Temple.  The Diaspora Jews, by contrast, were more open, believing that God accepted even uncircumcised Gentiles.  This is a view within scholarship, but there is also difference of opinion.  See here for my post about Christine Hayes’ book on whether Judaism considered Gentiles to be ritually impure.  In addition, in researching for my dissertation, I have read scholars who have questioned the conventional differentiation between Palestinian and Diaspora Judaism.  I think that Burge, in a brief footnote or endnote, should have informed readers that there is diversity within scholarship about this issue, even though I respect that this book may not have been intended to be a heavy, comprehensive work of scholarship, but rather an introductory work.  Also, since a Palestinian Jew and a Diasporan Jew in the book are debating whether Gentiles should be kept out of certain parts of the Temple, Burge should have provided some documentation that Diasporan Jews had a problem with such a policy.

7.  Burge did well to inform the reader about ancient beliefs and how they may differ from our own.  When Appius challenges a Roman soldier who is harassing Appius’ concubine, Burge informs us that Appius is defending his own honor, not the honor of his concubine.  Burge also tells us about ancient views on fevers and humors, and how they influenced the sort of surgery that was performed (i.e., bleeding a person to bring down a fever).

8.  Burge depicts Appius as the centurion in the synoptic Gospels who asks Jesus to heal his sick slave.  As a reader, I am not sure if that works, for the centurion in the Gospels was liked by the Jews and built them a synagogue, whereas Appius was not particularly devout towards the God of Israel and was not especially well-liked by the Jews.  Still, it did result in some moving scenes.  Appius has a piece of art in which vicious dogs are ripping a deer to shreds, and Jesus touches the deer.  Appius is then convicted of his love for violence and resolves to get rid of that piece of art!  While Burge in an interview about the book (which was inserted into my review copy by Intervarsity) distinguishes his book from Christian fiction by saying that he does not present the centurion converting to Christianity, my impression as a reader was that Appius was pretty close to becoming a Christian!

9.  I enjoyed the debate between the Jewish elder Tobias and Appius’ military assistant Marcus.  Marcus was on a Roman power trip, and Tobias was standing up boldly for his land and his people.

Overall, this is an enjoyable and informative book.  It would be useful for an Introduction to New Testament class, as long as students remembered that there is scholarly debate about some of the issues it raises.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book from Intervarsity Press.

Book Write-Up: Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars

Jon D. Mikalson.  Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars.  Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Herodotus was a fifth century B.C.E. historian, and he wrote about fifth century wars between the Greeks and the Persians.  Herodotus and Religion in the Persian Wars is about Herodotus’ depiction of Greek religion.  In this portrayal, Greek religion had vows, tithes, hero cults, oracles about the future that had to be interpreted, and gods who highly regarded their sanctuaries, hated human hubris, and helped out the Greeks in order to make certain battles into fairer fights.  Moreover, according to Mikalson, Greek religion valued common sense and reason rather than faith.  In terms of the scholarly landscape regarding religion and Herodotus, Jon Mikalson disagrees with Thomas Harrison on the question of whether Herodotus depicted the Greek gods as just.  For Mikalson, Herodotus does not do so but rather presents the gods as jealous for their sanctuary, eager to exact revenge whenever it is defiled or disrespected.

Mikalson refers to Herodotus’ characterization of Persian religion as one that lacked statues, temples, and altars, and yet he points out examples in Herodotus’ work of Persians practicing religion in a Greek manner, and even respecting Greek oracles and sanctuaries.

Mikalson also addresses the question of Herodotus’ own religious beliefs.  Herodotus believed in the gods, and he even appeared to think that the gods helped the Greeks in battle.  While he was not always clear about how the gods did so, often it appeared to be through manipulation of nature: a fierce wind or trouble at sea could impact what happened in a battle.  Herodotus was rather skeptical, however, of some of the miracle stories that he heard, even from those purporting to be eyewitnesses.

The appendix to the book goes more deeply into Herodotus’ views about religion.  According to the appendix, Herodotus believed that there were gods, but he thought that the names for those gods were imported from Egyptian religion, and that Homer and Hesiod then constructed a genealogy for the gods.  In essence, Herodotus acknowledges a divine and a human element to religion and the conceptualization of the divine.  According to Mikalson, Herodotus does not explain how Egyptians and Greeks have different names for certain gods, if the Greeks imported the names of their gods (or most of them) from the Egyptians.  Still, I found the appendix to be fascinating, on account of my own questions about divine revelation and the Bible (i.e., what is human, and what is divine?).

The first third part of the book was rather slow, since it was mainly about vows and gods helping the Greeks in battle, and that did not strike me as earth-shakingly new when it came to religion.  I was interested to learn, however, that the Greeks had tithes, and I wonder how they compare and contrast with Israelite tithing.  The book really picked up when Mikalson discussed Herodotus’ depiction of Persian religion and interaction with miracle stories, as well as the question of whether the gods in Herodotus were just.  The appendix, in my opinion, was the best part of the book, since it addressed Herodotus’ own views about the divine in light of his conclusion as a historian that Greek religion had conceptualizations of the divine that were human in origin.

Book Write-Up: Emperor Worship and Roman Religion

Ittai Gradel.  Emperor Worship and Roman Religion.  Oxford, New York: Clarendon Press, 2002.

On the subject of emperor worship in ancient Rome, Ittai Gradel seems to present a similar picture to what I have read thus far in other scholarly works: that worship of the Roman emperor while he was alive was not part of the official Roman cult, but it was practiced in private cults throughout the Roman empire.  The Senate did, however, declare a number of Roman emperors to be divine after their death.  According to Gradel, this practice declined as so many people were being divinized after death that there was not enough capacity to support their cults, and as the emperor became alienated from the Senate by no longer ruling from Rome.

That is my understanding of the big picture of what Gradel is arguing in Emperor Worship and Roman Religion.  Here are some other things that I got out of the book, things that are important to the author and that I found interesting:

1.  Gradel is arguing against scholarly assumptions, many of which he believes can be attributed to Christian influence.  These assumptions include the separation of politics and religion into separate spheres, a focus on theology, and a tendency to conceptualize divinity in terms of nature or a divine essence.  I did not always understand how Gradel believed that such assumptions influenced scholarly views of emperor worship: for example, Gradel argues against the idea that Roman emperors were not worshiped while they were alive, and he seems to believe that such a view flows from scholarly bias (or so it appears to me, and I could be mistaken).  Personally, I do not see how a Christian bias would lead scholars to believe that the emperor was not worshiped while he was still alive, for what difference would it make to Christianity if the Romans did that?  But Gradel does argue rather effectively that biases have influenced how scholars conceptualize the divine and, thus, emperor worship.  Whereas many scholars conceive of divinity in terms of one’s nature and essence and thus wonder how exactly the Romans believed that the emperor was divine, Gradel shifts the focus from ontology to status.  Essentially, Gradel contends that the emperor was worshiped on account of his status and his power, not because he was believed to be ontologically divine.

2.  This moves us to the worship of the emperor’s genius, his divine essence.  My impression from reading Gradel (and also W. Warde Fowler’s 1914 book, Roman Ideas of Deity) is that a number of scholars maintain that many Romans worshiped the emperor’s genius.  Gradel does not seem to dismiss that the emperor’s genius was worshiped, but he does mention certain considerations.  Gradel argues, for example, that a number of freemen would consider the worship of a superior’s genius to be degrading, since slaves worshiped the genius of their masters.  My understanding is that Gradel is contending that emperor worship was not so much about the worship of the emperor’s genius, but of the emperor himself.  For some reason, that was not considered to be degrading.

3.  Gradel talks about the divinization of emperors after their death.  This was a particularly rich discussion because of the vast amount of ground that it covered: how some emperors were not divinized after death on account of perceived evils, and thus they went to Hades rather than heaven; how an emperor could be declared divine by the Senate and yet rejected by the gods when he arrived at heaven; the reception (or, often, lack thereof) of deceased divinized emperors by the public; and the complexities of saying that an emperor was divine, if he died through assassination (as did Julius Caesar).  Of particular interest to me was Gradel’s discussion of emperors ascending to heaven in the flesh, how witnesses would voluntarily come forward to claim that they beheld this, and how some implicitly criticized the view that an emperor could ascend in the flesh.  This could be relevant to discussions about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and Gradel actually mentions Jesus’ ascension at one point.  Christian apologists like to argue that there were eyewitnesses to the risen Jesus and that the belief that Jesus rose physically went against the grain of Greco-Roman culture, which deemed a physical resurrection to be repugnant.  But witnesses were claiming to see the emperor ascending in the flesh to the heavens.  Of course, I am not entirely clear what they claimed to see: according to Gradel, an official ritual was devised whereby the emperor was taken to heaven, and that essentially entailed a bird flying off.  Still, I wonder if Roman claims about the emperor’s ascension could be relevant to Christian claims about Jesus.

I enjoyed Gradel’s book on account of its clarity, though I wish that Gradel summarized the conclusions of the book at the end.

Book Write-Up: Roman Ideas of Deity

W. Warde Fowler.  Roman Ideas of Deity in the Last Century Before the Christian Era: Lectures Delivered in Oxford for the Oxford University Fund.  London: MacMillan and Co., 1914.

I have been looking for books to read about ancient Roman religion, and this book stood out to me on account of its simple prose and its focus on the aspect of religion that interests me most: theological beliefs.  The book contains a series of lectures by W. Warde Fowler on Roman religion.  Fowler covers such topics as Fortuna and whether it was a goddess of chance, an extension of the head deity, or even considered to be a deity at all; monotheizing tendencies that treat Jupiter as the head god, and how that interrelated with Stoicism, which did not even believe in a personal deity; the belief that humans could become gods, and that this actually occurred with Zeus and other deities in the pantheon; the decline of Roman religion in the time of Augustus, and how many sought to compensate for this through mystery religion; how chaos led people to focus on individual saviors; family religion; and the worship of the Roman emperor’s genius, a divine aspect of him.

Overall, Fowler’s view seemed to be that Roman religion imported significant concepts from Greek religion, but that Roman religion did not faithfully hold on to those concepts because they were not authentic to it.  Roman religion inherited personalized deities from the Greeks, for example, but it tended to abandon that in favor of Stoicism or treating Jupiter in a monotheistic sense, plus there are writings in the time of Augustus that do not convey enthusiasm about the gods and that treat the gods’ names as symbolic.  Roman religion inherited from the Greeks a tendency to regard leaders as divine, but Roman emperors did not insist on being worshiped, and Roman emperors were often divinized after their death rather than when they were alive.  Fowler acknowledges that there were many in the Roman empire who worshiped the Roman emperor—-living or dead—-as divine, but he argues that worshiping a living emperor was not part of the official Roman cult.

I have been reading other books about Roman religion.  I recently read Jӧrg Rüpke.  Religion of the Romans (2009; see my post here), and I am currently in the middle of Ittai Gradel’s Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (2002).  Of course, the question that occurs to me when reading a 1914 book about Roman religion is the extent to which scholarship has changed: which of Fowler’s insights continue to be accepted, and which have been rejected?  Well, Fowler said that adherents to the Roman cult could basically manipulate the gods through ritual to do whatever the adherents wanted, but I got a different picture from Rüpke’s book: that the gods could refuse a request, and worshipers did not have to fulfill their vow if the gods did not fulfill their end of the bargain.  On Gradel, Gradel seems to disagree with saying that emperor worship was somehow inauthentic to Roman religion, for Gradel does not believe that we know a whole lot about what early Roman religion was like.  Gradel also does not appear to regard theology as particularly significant, for Romans often participated in the cult even if they did not believe in personal gods or gods who cared about human beings, plus the ritual could communicate inconsistent beliefs about the gods (i.e., a god is present in the Temple through the idol, yet is in heaven).

In terms of criticisms, I do not recall Fowler explaining how exactly Roman religion declined under Augustus—-what specific factors led to that.  He did a better job explaining how Roman religion came to highlight the individual, and yet, even then, he did not go into certain specifics: why was there chaos that was leading Romans to look to individuals as potential saviors?

Fowler also would have done well to have laid out a conclusion that summarized his arguments.  With some scholarly works, a reader can go through a maze of argumentation and wonder where exactly he or she is ending up.

Soon, maybe next week, I will write a post about Gradel’s book.  It is clear, I will say that.  I am not always clear about what exactly Gradel is arguing against, but the book itself is laid out quite well.

Book Write-Up: Religion of the Romans

Jӧrg Rüpke.  Religion of the Romans.  Trans. and ed., Richard Gordon.  Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press, 2009.

This book is about the religion of the ancient Romans: their rituals, their festivals and who attended them, their votive offerings, their sacrifices, and their private and public devotion.

From an academic perspective, this book is quite informative, especially for those who want to learn more about Roman ritual.  There was not a whole lot of chemistry between me and this book, however, and so I may try out other books on Roman religion in the future.  This book did have some interesting details, though: that the Epicureans believed that the gods had bodies that consisted of atoms and that “the dynamic equilibrium between the positive and negative flow of atoms” guaranteed these gods’ immortality (page 65); that people were supposed to pray out loud because otherwise others might suspect them of devising harm against someone; and that gods were not believed to be under any obligation to grant people’s requests.

I also learned about a type of votive offering, a devotio, in which a Roman commander would offer to sacrifice himself in battle if the gods let Rome win.  Usually, the commander would charge into the ranks of the enemy to fulfill this vow, but what would happen to him if he survived and Rome won?  What was thought to have happened was that he would be excluded from the community and regarded as a non-citizen, and “a doll representing him was burned” (page 165).  That would count as the fulfillment of the vow.  Rüpke goes on to say, though, that “this was almost certainly a Late-Republican or Augustan rationalization” (page 165).

I appreciated when Rüpke tied in what he was discussing in Roman religion with the Bible.  This happened rarely, but it did happen, as when he talked about Paul’s stance on whether the Corinthian Christians could eat meat offered to idols.

Overall, because of my familiarity with rituals in the Hebrew Bible, I did not feel as if I was in a no-man’s land when reading Rüpke’s discussion of Roman rituals, even if Rüpke provided quite a bit of theory.  They are a lot alike.  I would have liked, however, to have read more about Roman theology—-beliefs about the gods and the gods’ stances on morality—-along with Roman mythology.

I may find another book that is more of a fit for me.  I don’t particularly want to go through the hulkish Cambridge Companion to Roman Religion, at least not right now.  I may check out A Matter of the Gods, which is a book about how Romans viewed the gods, but it keeps getting checked out!  I checked it out one time and could not renew it because someone else wanted it, and later I went to the library and it was not on the shelves.  There was a book on the emperor cult, which might be pretty good.  We’ll see!  I’ll just keep on reading!

Book Write-Up: The Roman Way, by Edith Hamilton

Edith Hamilton.  The Roman Way.  New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1932, 1960.

Edith Hamilton wrote about the Greeks, the Romans, the Hebrew Bible, and Christianity during her retirement.  I recently read her first book, The Greek Way, and I promised in my write-up about that book that I would write about another book that she wrote, The Roman Way.  Here is my write-up of that!

Edith Hamilton covers a number of significant figures in ancient Roman history: Plautus, Terence, Cicero, Julius Caesar, Catullus, Horace, Virgil, Livy, Seneca, and Juvenal.  She contrasts the Romans with the Greeks.  The Greeks, according to her depiction, were fun-loving, philosophical and curious about the world, hateful of death, and loving of beauty.  The Romans, by contrast, enjoyed bloody sports, glorified death, were not particularly philosophical or curious (unless philosophy served to bolster a particular worldview), and were highly practical.  Whereas the Greeks were not explicitly moralistic in their works, preferring to show rather than tell (as one anti-war Greek simply presented the horrors of war, without saying it was wrong), the Roman writers were didactic and preachy.  You would think that Hamilton regards the Greeks as fun and interesting, whereas the Romans were dry, but that is not entirely true.  Not only does Hamilton respect the Romans’ practicality (which contributed to the development of Roman law), but she also argues that they were more romantic than the Greeks.

Hamilton honestly interacts with the works of the figures whom she discusses.  In discussing Juvenal, she acknowledges that he has a valid point in criticizing the rampant immorality in Rome, but she also contends that his misogyny clouds his judgment.  I particularly enjoyed Hamilton’s discussion of Stoicism.  According to Hamilton, the Stoics believed that God dwelt in every person and that all men were equal.  They were critical of the bloody games and of slavery.  They also focused on this life rather than an afterlife, and they encouraged people to cope with whatever lot befell them.  I was initially skeptical of Hamilton’s depiction of the Stoics as democratic (if that is the right word), for I have read about some of the authoritarian (even brutal) acts of Marcus Aurelius, a Stoic.  Whatever his flaws were, however, some have depicted him as rather progressive, and some have puzzled over his tolerance of slavery, notwithstanding his Stoic beliefs (see here and here).  Maybe Hamilton is simplistic in her characterization of Stoicism, but it may still have truth in it.

Book Write-Up: The Greek Way, by Edith Hamilton

Edith Hamilton.  The Greek Way.  New York: Random House, 1930, 1942.

Edith Hamilton wrote a number of books about ancient Greece and Rome.  She even wrote one about the Hebrew Bible.  The Greek Way was her very first book, and she wrote that during her retirement (so it’s never too late to write a renowned book!).  She would go on to receive honorary doctorates, and even an honorary citizenship of Greece!

The Greek Way muses about such Greek figures as Pindar, Aristophanes, Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.  There are also chapters about Greek art, Greek religion, and things that the Greeks can teach the modern world.  There are a number of cases in which she compares and contrasts Greek thought with that of the modern West and the Bible.  Moreover, she explores such topics as Greek ideas on slavery, as she refers to an anti-slavery voice and contrasts it with that of Aristotle.

The Greeks, in her telling, were people who enjoyed life and valued fun, even as they exalted the heroes who suffered nobly (as opposed to feeling sorry for them).  They sought to learn from past wars, looked with longing at the past, and often valued the individual, even though they also had a strong sense of the collective and could become authoritarian.

My favorite chapter in the book was the one about Greek religion.  Hamilton argued that it was a step up from the magic that preceded it, and she observes a progression from gods who only responded to the powerful to gods who protected the weak and valued justice.  Elsewhere in the book, Hamilton discusses a Greek attempt to reconcile suffering with the existence of just gods, as well as differences of opinion on the value of law and tradition.

The book way good, in its own way, and I plan to read The Roman Way shortly.  I would have enjoyed The Greek Way a lot more, however, had Hamilton included a straightforward historical introduction about the time and figures of her book, before launching into her musings.

Book Write-Up: The Myth of Persecution, by Candida Moss

Candida Moss.  The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom.  New York: HarperOne: 2013.

Candida Moss is a professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at Notre Dame.  Her book The Myth of Persecution was widely discussed in the biblio-blogosphere and other media outlets over a year ago (see here for my post about this).  I had already read a number of reviews of the book, so I thought that I had a good idea what Candida Moss’ thesis was.  Still, when I saw the book at a local library about a month ago, I decided to check it out.  In my experience, reading what others say about a book can be quite different from reading the book itself, for reading the book myself allows me to have my own unique experience of it—-to notice and to appreciate what stands out to me personally.  Granted, I cannot read everything out there, so there will be times when I may have to rest on book reviews or scanning to tell me what a book is about and what its main arguments are.  But, whenever I can, I like to read a book for myself.

Candida Moss’ overall argument in The Myth of Persecution is that ancient Christians were not singled out for religious persecution by the Roman authorities.  Indeed, Christians were deemed to be rather subversive, for they refused to participate in the imperial cult and to serve in the army, plus they were not exactly cooperative in court, for some of them refused even to give their names and instead just identified themselves as Christians.  Their belief that Jesus should be obeyed over Caesar also did not endear them to the Romans.  But Christians were not specifically targeted for persecution just for being Christians.  Roman emperors were not demanding adherence to the imperial cult in order to single out Christians for persecution, but rather the emperors were doing so for political purposes: to consolidate their own political power in uncertain times.  Moreover, Romans even allowed Christians to serve in governmental positions of authority.  In a time when the bar for execution was low, there were Christians who were executed for subversion.  At the same time, in discussing the Book of Revelation’s depiction of martyrdom, Moss contends that the number of martyrs was probably quite small, since the authorities in those days lacked the capacity of later totalitarian states.

Moss examines accounts of martyrdom, ones that have long been believed to be historically-accurate (i.e., Polycarp, Perpetua, etc.).  She notes anachronisms and historical implausibilities, as she compares what the accounts say with when historical trends emerged as well as Roman procedures.  She dates many accounts to the third century C.E., which is some time after the time that they purport to depict.  Moss also questions Tacitus’ claim that Nero blamed the fire that he caused on the Christians, for she doubts that Christians were a distinct group in Nero’s day, and she maintains that Tacitus was projecting the opposition to Christians in his own day onto Nero’s time.

In addition, Moss observes literary patterning in martyr stories: many of the stories look similar or follow a pattern, or they resemble early stories about martyrdom or the death of the righteous, such as the story in II Maccabees 7 about the martyrdom of the seven righteous sons, and the death of Socrates.  Moss is open to seeing some historical kernel in these stories, but she maintains that they have been edited for specific purposes.  Moss argues that even a story about Jesus’ death—-the inspiration to Christian martyrs—-has been patterned after Socrates.  Moss is definitely not a Christ-mythicist, for she believes that Jesus existed and was arrested and died, but she thinks that the Gospel of Luke makes Jesus’ death look like that of Socrates, as Jesus follows the ideal of greeting his death with calm, in contrast with how Jesus is in Mark.  Moss also notes an ancient Christian comparison of Jesus with Socrates.

According to Moss, there were a variety of reasons that ancient Christians emphasized martyrdom.  Some wanted a straight ticket to heaven rather than going to purgatory first, or to hell, and they believed that martyrdom would guarantee that for them; later, in medieval times, several Christian Crusaders would view themselves as martyrs.  Martyrs also had a certain authority, and Christians appealed to their alleged statements to combat what they believed to be heresies, or to get a church built in their area.

Moss believes that her historical analysis on this topic is important for today, for so many people depict themselves as martyrs.  There are conservatives and Christians who believe that they are being persecuted, and this promotes an us vs. them mindset that demonizes the other side rather than seeking common ground.  (Moss still acknowledges that there is a place for fighting oppression, however.)  Moss favorably refers to Christians such as Justin Martyr, who engaged pagan philosophy and sought commonalities with the Romans.

A common Christian apologetic claim is that Christianity is true because Jesus’ disciples were willing to die for it, and they would not have died for something that they knew was a lie.  According to this rationale, the disciples were so willing to die because they had seen the risen Jesus.  Moss actually engages this argument, or at least a version of it: she says that she heard a version of it as a young girl in school, and she also refers to Justin Martyr’s argument that the Christians are right because they are being persecuted, whereas the heretics are not.  Moss does not buy this argument, for she notes that all sorts of people—-including non-Christians—-have died for a cause.  Moreover, she refers to various contradictory stories about how the disciples died, and not all of them depict them as martyrs.

I have little quarrel with Moss’ historical arguments, but I do have slight disagreements with her application of them to contemporary debates and issues.  First of all, I do not think that she successfully refutes the Christian apologetic argument that Christianity is true because the disciples were willing to die for their belief that Jesus rose from the dead.  She acknowledges that ancient Christians died for their beliefs, and, even if many did not, they still suffered or experienced inconvenience on account of them.  While people have died for all sorts of beliefs, skeptics of the Christian apologetic argument should address why the early Christians were willing to die for Jesus specifically, a man who had been shamefully executed.  Why did this cause survive, and is his actual resurrection the only explanation?  Many skeptics have explored this territory, to their credit.

Second, while I agree with Moss that having a persecution complex can lead to an us vs. them mindset rather than seeking to understand other points-of-view and find common ground, I do not think that she really sought to understand the viewpoint of conservatives and Christians claiming to be persecuted.  What leads them to think that way, and what (if anything) can be done to ameliorate their concerns?  Maybe it’s a lost cause: some Christians do not want their business’s health insurance plans to cover certain forms of contraception, or they do not want their adoption agencies to recognize same-sex couples, whereas the other side thinks that they should.  Common ground is not always easy to find.

In addition to reading Moss’ overall argument, there were other interesting things that I learned from the book.  First of all, Moss claimed that the vast majority of Christians in the ancient world did not go to church.  On page 283, she refers  to Ramsay MacMullen, who argued in The Second Church: Popular Christianity A.D. 200-400 “that only 5 percent of the Christian population actually attended church services” (Moss’ words).  So much for “forsake not the assembling of yourselves together” (Hebrews 10:25)!  Second, Moss states on page 285: “The Romans acquired their knowledge about the gods through observation.  It was empirical and factual.  The Christians spoke about ‘trust’ and ‘belief.’  Why anyone would want to die for something as flimsy as a belief must have seemed quite curious to an ancient Roman.”  I want to learn more about this, and I see that the book that Moss cites for this claim—-Clifford Ando’s The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire—-is at a local library, so I may just check it out!  I wonder how the Romans empirically justified their belief in many gods.  I know that Roman philosophers, such as the Stoics, had their arguments for their beliefs about the divine.  Third, Moss tells the story of how a Buddhist tale became a Christian tale in the course of its transmission.

Good book!

Spiritual Experiences: Discipline and Quiet

On page 286 of Circle of Life: Traditional Teachings of Native American Elders, James David Audlin talks about attitudes to avoid when one wants to receive a vision:

"If we decide in our own minds, 'I am never going to have a vision,' or 'I insist on having a vision,' we make it harder to have the vision that the Grandmothers and Grandfathers may want to bring to us.  It's like telling yourself, 'I could never learn to play the piano' or 'I insist on learning to play the piano.'  If you tell yourself either, it becomes much more difficult to learn to play the piano.  Rather, chant[e] ishta, seeing with the heart, is learning to be quiet within and not make presumptions, so the vision, if there is to be one, may come to us.  Gautama Buddha taught well that desire (including anti-desire, or fear) blocks us from progress.  Zen Buddhism in particular teaches us how to be quiet within so the delicate wakan presence of a vision, like the sighting of a rare bird or of an albino deer, such as I once saw in Vermont, is not chased off by our loud desires or fears."

What I get out of the above passage is that sometimes we need to get out of our own way in order to have a spiritual experience.  Does this accord with what I have seen, read, or heard?  I'd say that many have told me that I need to work hard in order to have a spiritual experience.  "Keep seeking the baptism of the Holy Spirit", a Pentecostal once told me.  "You have to do the first eight steps of the twelve step program, then you will have the spiritual experience that Step Nine talks about", people in twelve-step recovery groups are told.  The first century Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria believed that, in many cases, an ecstatic spiritual experience came after rigorous asceticism and contemplation.  And James David Audlin himself, on pages 273-277, quotes a story about someone who fasted from the comforts of modern life (i.e., hamburgers, television, etc.) and repeatedly cried out to the Great Mystery, but he eventually felt great peace when he accepted the wilderness around him and, in turn, felt accepted by it.

I think that having a spiritual experience does require work, discipline, and preparation.  Even James David Audlin says in the passage that I quoted at the beginning of this post that Zen Buddhism has a technique that helps practitioners to become quiet within.  I'm sure that takes discipline!  But it seems to be the case that the spiritual experience comes when we are at a state of quiet and peace, when we're just open----when we're not despairing that we will never have a spiritual experience, on the one hand, and we're not obsessed over having one, on the other hand.  Sometimes, the spiritual experience may come when we're not expecting it.  An old man once told me a story about how he was praying on his tractor and, out of the blue, just started speaking in tongues!  C.S. Lewis at the end of Mere Christianity says that we will find Christ when we look to Him and not to ourselves.

We can take steps to make ourselves receptive, but when, how, and if we have a spiritual experience is the prerogative of God, as the spirit blows wherever it wishes.  But, at the same time, I believe that God loves us, even if we don't have a spiritual experience.  That realization can take off of me the pressure to have one, or the despair at not having one, and perhaps it can put me in the position of enjoying God for God's company and being open, whatever happens.