From the Narrow Desert

There were in the time of Elijah two rival cults in Israel. The first worshiped a God who may originally have had a name (contemporary scholarship suggests Hadad or Ishkur) but was generally known simply as "the Lord"; the second gave their God a proper name -- but, after centuries of superstitious refusal to pronounce that name or even to write it with its proper vowel points, its precise form is no longer known. Thus it has come about that, in our English Bibles, it is the second of these Gods that is called "the Lord"; while for the first -- the one that the Israelites called "the Lord" -- that Hebrew word is simply transliterated and used as if it were a proper name.

For my part, I shall use the title "Lord" as the Israelites did and deal with the uncertain name of the other God by means of the same expedient resorted to by Victor Hugo, Freud, and others when they had reason to avoid spelling out a particular proper name. Even choosing an initial presents some difficulties, since the Hebrew letter in question can be transliterated as I, J, or Y. Out of deference to Dante (see Paradiso XXVI, 133-138) and to English translations of Moses (Exodus 3:14), I have chosen the first option.

Regarding the detailed differences between the two cults, all we can say for sure is that the followers of the Lord used religious statuary in their worship, while those of I---- tended towards iconoclasm. Any other differences in religious belief or practice are a matter of conjecture.

Everyone will be familiar with the story of the showdown between these two cults on Mount Carmel, instigated by Elijah (whose name means "My God is I----"). The story is related in 1 Kings 18; except for punctuation, paragraphing, and the rectification of names explained above, I follow the King James Version.

And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, "How long halt ye between two opinions? if I---- be God, follow him: but if the Lord, then follow him."

And the people answered him not a word.

Then said Elijah unto the people, "I, even I only, remain a prophet of I----; but the Lord’s prophets are 450 men. Let them therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under: and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood, and put no fire under. And call ye on the name of your God, and I will call on the name of I----: and the God that answereth by fire, let him be God."

And all the people answered and said, "It is well spoken."

When the prophets of the Lord were unsuccessful in obtaining an "answer by fire," Elijah ridiculed them and their God.

And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of the Lord from morning even until noon, saying, "O Lord, hear us." 

But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made.

And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, "Cry aloud: for he is a God; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked."

Elijah was, of course, more successful in eliciting from his God an apparently supernatural conflagration. (We are told that the fire consumed even the stones of the altar!)

And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, "I----, he is the God; I----, he is the God." 

And Elijah said unto them, "Take the prophets of the Lord; let not one of them escape."

And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.

Of course that wasn't the end of the conflict. Magic tricks never really converted anyone, nor has making martyrs ever been an effective way of stamping out an unwanted religion. Attempts were naturally made to avenge the 450 murdered prophets, and the feud between the two religions continued for some centuries. In the end, though, so complete was the victory of I---- that in modern languages it is he who is known simply as "the Lord," while his onetime rival, his cult now long extinct, is remembered only as a cartoonish devil once worshiped by idiots in the distant past.


One or two centuries after Elijah, the prophet known as Epimenides appeared in Crete. No one really knows where he came from; the story that has come down to us is that he just emerged from a cave one day, having slept there for 57 years. Although his line "Cretans, always liars" later became the basis of a logical paradox ("If a Cretan says Cretans always lie, is he telling the truth?"), it seems highly unlikely that this tattoo-covered shaman was in fact an ethnic Cretan. We can only speculate as to his true origins, but to me such sparse information as we have suggests that he may have been of Scythian extraction. At any rate, he actually put the line "Cretans, always liars" in the mouth of Minos -- a genuine Cretan -- in one of his poems, so the paradox is saved. In the poem, Minos berates his countrymen for having dared to maintain a "tomb of Zeus."

They fashioned a tomb for you, holy and high one,
Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies.
But you are not dead: you live and abide forever,
For in you we live and move and have our being.

Zeus is supposed to have been born in Crete, and apparently he once had a tomb there as well! Could "Zeus" have been a real man who lived and died in Crete in the distant past, one of such blessed memory that he was gradually deified in the minds of those who survived him, coming to be thought of as a god, and eventually as God? It's interesting to speculate, but at any rate, by the time Epimenides came along, Zeus was God and God was Zeus, and a "tomb of Zeus" was blasphemous
nonsense.

Later, around the 3rd century BC, Aratus of Soli began his Phaenomena, a didactic poem on the rather unpromising subjects of astronomy and meteorology, with a prayer to Zeus:

From Zeus let us begin; him do we mortals never leave unnamed; full of Zeus are all the streets and all the market-places of men; full is the sea and the havens thereof; always we all have need of Zeus. For we are also his offspring; [. . .] Wherefore him do men ever worship first and last. Hail, O Father, mighty marvel, mighty blessing unto men. Hail to thee and to the Elder Race! Hail, ye Muses, right kindly, every one! But for me, too, in answer to my prayer direct all my lay, even as is meet, to tell the stars.

As readers versed in the New Testament will already have divined, the only reason such obscure figures as Epimenides and Aratus are on my radar is that they are quoted there, in Paul's sermon at the Areopagus in Athens as reported in Acts 17.

Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him "we live, and move, and have our being;" as certain also of your own poets have said, "For we are also his offspring." 

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

Although Paul begins with his famous reference to the Unknown God -- implying that the true God is someone over and above the named and "known" gods of the Greek pantheon -- he goes on to quote with approval two different poems about Zeus as if they are about the true God -- which, in my judgment, they are. Where an Elijah would have held Zeus up to ridicule and insisted that his own, better God be worshiped instead, Paul took a different tack. Never did he say that Zeus was a false god, a devil, or a figment of his worshipers imagination. He did not stoop so low as to quibble over names. (As recently as the 18th century, certain French pamphleteers were maintaining that their Dieu -- etymologically, Zeus! -- was the true deity, while the English God was nothing but another name for Lucifer; before you laugh, think if you have ever been guilty of the same thing.) Paul took it for granted that the Athenians already worshiped God and attempted only to correct and expand their ideas regarding him. So Dante says of the Greek pagans not that they worshiped false gods but that "they did not worship God in fitting ways."

Paul, like Elijah, triumphed in the end. It took a century or two, but his God eventually supplanted Zeus entirely.


Well, whose approach was right? Was Zeus God? Was Baal? Is Allah? . . . Is Yahweh?

Logically, either answer to each of those questions can be made consistent with the same facts, since there is no logical difference between believing in something that does not exist and believing false things about something that does exist. When, as often happens, I receive a letter addressed to Mr. Tychanievich or Mr. Pychonievich, is that the name of a person who does not exist, or is it my own name, spelt wrong? Is it more correct for a Yuletide spoilsport to say "there's no such thing as Santa Claus" or "You have some inaccurate beliefs about Saint Nicholas of Myra"? Should I call myself an atheist (which I am, when theism is narrowly defined) or simply say that my beliefs about God are somewhat unorthodox?

The question of which approach to take, then -- of whether to be an Elijah or a Paul -- is a practical rather than a factual one, a question of rhetorical or pedagogical technique, and different situations may call for different approaches. Looking back, and setting aside our squeamishness about mass murder, we can perhaps say that both Elijah and Paul made the choices that were strategically "right."

Note: Synchronicity alert: Just after writing the Epimenides part of this post, which mentions in passing the Liar Paradox associated with his name, I checked Bruce Charlton's blog and read his then-new post "Does the I Ching have a personality?" He quoted an interview of Philip K. Dick by someone called Mike, including this exchange:

Phil: No, I don’t use the I Ching anymore. I’ll tell ya, the I Ching told me more lies than anybody else I’ve ever known. [. . .] One time I really zapped it. I asked it if it was the devil. And it said yes. And then I asked it if it spoke for God, and it said no. It said I am a complete liar. I mean that was the interpretation. 

In other words I set it up. I set it up. I asked two questions simultaneously and it said I speak with forked tongue, is what it said. And then it said, oops, I didn’t mean to say that. But it had already –

Mike: Then you get a paradox. [. . .] That’s the paradox. It’s lying when it says it’s lying.

Note added: I should make it clear that the form of my question is deliberate: not "Was Jesus really the Messiah?" but "Was the Messiah really Jesus?" I wanted it to have the same form as "Is Zeus really God?" -- where the status of Zeus is being questioned by asking if he is God, the status of God being taken for granted. In the same way, I am taking the divinity of Jesus for granted and questioning the idea of the Messiah, not vice versa.

Henry Ossawa Tanner, Nicodemus Coming to Christ (1927)

I have been putting off tackling this chapter, thinking it too deep for me -- but if I made it through the first chapter, there's no excuse for shrinking from the third.

This post was originally going to cover all of John 3 -- but, in keeping with my decision to write shorter posts and post them more frequently, I've trimmed it down, first to the first 21 verses (the Nicodemus episode) and finally to the first 10 (the bit about being born again). As always, the text under consideration is in purple. Everything else is my own commentary.

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[1] There was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews:

Nicodemus is a very obviously Greek name (Νικόδημος, "victory of the people" or perhaps "victory over the people"), so finding it here as the name of a "ruler of the Jews" in Jerusalem is a bit surprising -- more surprising than finding such Greek names as Andrew and Philip in "Galilee of the Gentiles." My first thought was to see this seemingly inappropriate name as a red flag, a possible warning that the character is fictional, but in fact I had underestimated how Hellenized even Jerusalem had become by the first century. Some translations of Josephus's Jewish War (2.17.10) mention a Jew called Nicodemus in first-century Jerusalem, though it appears that the original Greek actually has Nicomedes. At any rate, both names are equally Greek. There is also a Nicodemus ben Gorion, a first-century Jew in Jerusalem, mentioned in the Talmud, though tradition has it that Nicodemus was a punning nickname, not his original name. It is doubtful whether either or both of these Nicodemuses could be identical to Jesus' nocturnal visitor, but they do establish the plausibility of that name appearing at that time and place.

"A ruler of the Jews" probably means that Nicodemus was a member of the Jerusalem Sanhedrin, which enjoyed a fair degree of autonomy under Roman rule.

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[2] The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God:

Nicodemus's coming to Jesus by night suggests a certain lack of courage, an unwillingness to show his interest openly. This is consistent with what we read later of Nicodemus, in John 7. When the chief priests and Pharisees say, in Nicodemus's presence, "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on him?" Nicodemus does not exactly stand up and say, "I know that he is a teacher come from God" -- though even the rather weak defense he does offer ("Doth our law judge any man, before it hear him, and know what he doeth?") is enough to elicit accusations that he is "of Galilee."

On the other hand, this interview under cover of night -- like the Matthean prayer prayed in a closet -- is evidence of sincerity. Unlike the stereotypical Pharisee, who comes to Jesus with some clever and insincere question, hoping to catch him in his words and make a fool of him publicly, Nicodemus can have no other motive than to learn more of the doctrine of a teacher whom he honestly believes to be "from God." There is no element of sophistry or grandstanding. And given the fear implied by the need to come secretly, at night, it took a certain degree of courage to come to Jesus at all. Nicodemus's use of the plural -- "we know that thou art a teacher come from God" -- suggests that at least some of his Pharisee colleagues also believed but were afraid to show that belief even in private.

Moral judgments of Nicodemus have varied. The Catholics made him a saint. Calvin, on the other hand, disparaged as "Nicodemites" those Protestants who were afraid to stand up and be counted as such.

I have illustrated this post with Nicodemus Coming to Christ, painted by Henry Ossawa Tanner -- the son of a former slave who had escaped via the Underground Railroad. Art critics often mention that the figure of Nicodemus must have resonated with someone of Tanner's background, since many slaves also had to "come to Jesus by night," learning in secrecy the forbidden art of reading the Bible. It is ironic that Nicodemus himself -- a ruler, not a slave -- found himself under a similar necessity. Now the zeitgeist has apparently come full circle, and it is once again the elite who find it most dangerous to show an interest in Christianity.

Since Nicodemus's meeting with Jesus was conducted secretly, at night, how is it that it has entered the historical record? Were the disciples present at the interview? It seems unlikely. Nor can I imagine that Jesus himself would have betrayed a confidence by publishing what Nicodemus had been so careful to conceal. We can only conclude that Nicodemus himself told the story to someone, perhaps shortly before his death. Despite his caginess before the chief priests, Nicodemus did in the end make a public show of the high regard in which he held Jesus, providing an extraordinary 100 pounds of myrrh and aloes for his burial (John 19:39).

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for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.

We have just read in the previous chapter that "when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did" (John 2:23), and apparently Nicodemus was one such. No account of the miracles themselves is given, so we cannot be sure what exactly Jesus had been doing or how out-of-the-ordinary it was; based on what the Gospels say elsewhere, we might assume paranormal healings of some sort (or perhaps exorcisms, though no exorcisms are described in the Fourth Gospel).

Our generation no longer believes in miracles. This is not to say that we discount the possibility of the paranormal (though of course many of us do that as well), but that we no longer consider the paranormal to be evidence of divine favor -- which is what the word miracle implies. We no longer reason, as Nicodemus did, that "no man can do these miracles . . . except God be with him." Most of can't even muster much interest in the numerous documented "miracles" of, say, Sathya Sai Baba. We assume without bothering to investigate that they represent some combination of fraud and non-denominational "psychic powers," but we feel none of the urgency that should accompany a conviction that God (or Mahadeva) must be with such a man.

Whose reaction to "miracles" is better, ours or Nicodemus's? In a way, the question is irrelevant. We simply can't react to miracles the way Nicodemus and his contemporaries did, so there's no point asking whether or not we should. Our faith must be grounded in other things.

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[3] Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

[4] Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb, and be born? 

[5] Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. [6] That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. [7] Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again.

Now we come to the nub of things. Everything depends on what interpretation is given to this being "born again" -- and Jesus declines to give the interpretation himself. When Nicodemus asks for clarification ("You obviously can't mean 'born again' literally, so what do you mean by it?"), Jesus elaborates the metaphor but does not explain it. Many simple explanations have been proposed: It means being baptized and receiving the Holy Ghost; it means death and resurrection (or reincarnation); it means the personal transformation whereby one becomes a believer. Jesus could easily have given some such explanation -- Nicodemus clearly wanted one -- but he declined to do so. We are meant to puzzle it out for ourselves as best we can. The Jesus of the Synoptics will sometimes give his disciples the "key" to a parable, explaining it in a straightforward X-means-Y manner, but the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel never explains anything and rarely, if ever, gives a straight answer to a question. This should get our attention an make us ask what he's about. Did he want to communicate his message or not?

The only reasonable conclusion, I think, is that communicating a particular set of doctrines was not Jesus' purpose at all. If it was, he went about it in a very inefficient manner, saying things that were bound to be misunderstood and speaking much less clearly than he could have if he had had a mind to. His teachings were not meant to communicate, but to facilitate direct revelation. As we spend time thinking deeply about the things he said, God can speak to us -- or perhaps at times we can simply apprehend the truth directly, without the mediation even of God. The Word is not a finished product to be consumed, but an agent of creation -- or, as the Synoptic parables have it, a seed. "The sower soweth the word" (Mark 4:14). "The sages . . . must speak occasionally," says Éliphas Lévi. "Yes, they must speak -- not, however, to disclose, but lead others to discover. Noli ire, fac venire."

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So numerous interpretation of Jesus' words to Nicodemus exist, and this diversity is perhaps legitimate and even intended, the seed growing differently in different soils. I have already mentioned some of the common interpretations of "born again." As for "born of water and of the spirit," this had been taken to mean baptism and confirmation, or physical birth ("water" referring to the amniotic fluid) and spiritual rebirth. Valentin Tomberg has his own idiosyncratic interpretation based on the fact that the surface of a body of water is reflective -- hence passive and reactive, as opposed to the active spirit.

I think this passage should probably be understood in light of John 1, to which it clearly alludes. The key passages are vv. 12-13 and 33.

[12] But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: [13] Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 

. . . 

[33] And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost.

John 1:13 contrasts being born "of God" with being born "of the will of the flesh," which is mirrored by "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (3:6); and "born of water and of the Spirit" (3:5) parallels John's reference to being baptized "with water" and "with the Holy Ghost" (1:33). Ghost and Spirit are, of course, variant translations of the same Greek word (as is wind in 3:8). As I mentioned in my notes on John 1, the Greek expression translated "born of" is properly used to indicate a person's mother, not father. Water, the Spirit, and the flesh (and, in 1:13, even God himself) are being presented as metaphorical mothers.

Nicodemus rightly dismisses the idea of a man's entering the womb a second time in order to be born again. Even if such a thing were biologically possible, what could possibly be the point of such an exercise? Why should a fully developed organism, which is already viable outside the womb, go back in only to come right back out again? Even granting that the expression is obviously metaphorical, the metaphor can't be that, or it could only be a metaphor for something completely pointless. No, what Jesus is telling Nicodemus is this: You've emerged from your mother's uterus, but in a larger sense you're still in a womb. There's a larger womb from which you have not yet emerged, and until you do so you will never see the kingdom of God.


Assuming that "born of water" refers to the amniotic fluid of the physical womb, to be "born of" that water is to come out of it. What, then, does that imply about being "born of" the Spirit -- or of God? When Epimenides of Knossos wrote, in the voice of Minos addressing Zeus, "for in you we live and move and have our being," was he speaking as one who had not yet been born of God? Well, yes, I think so. Epimenides, who lived some 600 years before Christ, was a shaman-type character of uncertain extraction (when he died, it was discovered that his whole body was covered with very un-Greek tattoos), and although Paul would later quote this line and apply it to the God of the Christians, it expresses what is essentially a pre-Christian idea.

"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." When a baby is born, what had been a part of the mother's body becomes a physically independent body. In an analogous way, those who are born again become independent spirits. They are not fully independent, of course, any more than a newborn baby is fully independent of its mother, but they have taken an irreversible step in that direction. The goal is no longer to be, in Meister Eckhart's words, "a clear glass through which God can shine," but rather to become an independent "friend of God."

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[8] The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.

As I have already mentioned, the same Greek word (πνεῦμα), can mean "spirit," "breath," or "wind" -- a range of meanings shared by its Hebrew counterpart רוּחַ -- and only the context can determine which is intended in a given passage. In this case, the use of the verb blow makes wind the only possible translation.

"That which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (or wind), and I think what Jesus is saying here is that one who has been born of the spirit is just that: an independent spirit, a free agent, an uncaused cause. The spirit does as it chooses ("bloweth where it listeth"), but "whence it cometh, and whither it goeth" are unknowable even to that spirit's own conscious mind.


Bruce Charlton expresses this idea well in a recent post:

That which does the free thinking is the Self. That which is conscious of the content of thinking is Consciousness, and Consciousness is different from the Self. Consciousness 'observes' thinking that is 'coming-out-of' the Self. [. . .] We cannot know what is going-on 'inside' the Self. If we could understand its 'inner workings', it would not be the Self, and it would not be free. Analysis must stop at the Self.

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[9] Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be? [10] Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things? 

"How can these things be?" has long been my own response to the whole idea of agency and free will, so I understand where Nicodemus is coming from, but Jesus' response is the correct one. Rather than try to explain how these things can be, he says, in effect, "Come on, are you seriously trying to tell me you don't know?" In the end, everyone does know what agency is, no matter how good they may be at constructing arguments proving that they don't.