me and my pulmonary embolism

Another long delay since my last post, but I promise my excuse is even better than the last one; I spent almost a week in the hospital enjoying the morphine drip after the pneumothorax on my lung, or the cracked bone in my hand, formed a clot that went to my lung and got infected. Franciska cheerily informed me on the phone the other night that 1 in 10 pulmonary embolisms are fatal; I'm sure the statistic is misleading but I take some dark pleasure in proclaiming myself the latest winner of Pulmonary Embolism Roulette.

While I was laid up I refused to think about the fact that an embolism killed my dad in 1998; he was 75 years old, not in great health, and I am not his biological offspring but none of that seemed to help. Mortality has a way of getting back in your face, in the hospital.


In an odd bit of timing, my mom's brother, who drove down from Ontario, showed up for a surprise visit the very day I was admitted. Uncle Harold stayed in Dartmouth for the whole week. He drove Mom to visit me in my room each day, and brought me home on his last day here. Mom and Harold have lost two sisters to cancer, Harold's wife Marian is in the last stages of Alzheimer's, and neither one of them is in the greatest of health, so mortality is very much on Harold's mind these days. His plan after Halifax was to head up to Moncton for a week to visit the old stomping grounds; I got the strong impression that he is thinking of it as one last visit home.

From my perch on my hospital bed I wasn't feeling particularly insulated from all of that. If there's one thing I got reminded of this month, it's that there's not a one of us that's indestructible.

Bart Ehrman, The Da Vinci Code, and the historical Jesus

This post marks the return to blogging of the fingers on my bruised left hand. They're not 100% yet but it seems that I can type today, more or less.

"If Dan Brown had gotten all his facts straight, there would have been no compelling reason for me to write this book. But he didn't... It would not have taken that much homework (a few hours, maybe) to learn that the Dead Sea Scrolls didn't contain any Christian documents, or that the Gospel of Philip is not in Aramaic, or that there were not thousands of documents from Jesus' own day recording his activities..."

I've been under a bit of pressure, the past few months, to read The Da Vinci Code. This kind of pressure: "So, James, you study religion, and stuff. What do you think of The Da Vinci Code?"

Eventually, months ago, I caved and borrowed a copy. My unfortunate injury gave me the perfect opportunity to finish reading it this weekend, and also to read Bart Ehrman's handy-dandy Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code. I was originally intending to blog my take on the novel itself, but what follows will probably end being more like a review of Ehrman's book about it.

Bart Ehrman's take on The Da Vinci Code is much like mine, although I gather he liked reading it more than I did ("I must say that I like it a lot and think... that it's a terrific page-turner"). Sadly, I think that two university degrees in English have destroyed my ability truly to enjoy prose this horrendous. ("Clockwork, Langdon thought. Leave it to the Swiss.")

Where Ehrman and I concur is that this novel has a whole lot of false history in it. By "false history" I don't mean, and Ehrman doesn't mean, the sort of poetic license or deliberate bending that one sees for aesthetic reasons in historical romances. We mean the stuff that is meant to be understood by the reader as a factual basis for the fictional action.

Cover page of Dan Brown's novel: "FACT... All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." Both Ehrman and I are quite concerned about the fact that the descriptions of documents in The Da Vinci Code are anything but accurate. It's a shame, really, that millions of people are going to end up with so many wrong impressions about the historical record.

Ehrman's top ten list of factual errors in The Da Vinci Code still lives online, but before I get to a couple of those specifics, I want to mention one of my favourite sections of his book... the final section of his introduction, subtitled "How Critical History Gets Done." History students, here's a nice little Ehrman quote for your fridge, also suitable for framing:

Some people are inclined simply to believe anything found in a canonical source... whereas others are inclined to believe anything that contradicts a canonical source. This latter approach is especially favoured by people who are attracted to conspiracy theories—but also by intellectually curious people who believe the maxim that "the winners write the history" and are therefore intrigued by the possibility of recovering the "other side" of the story. Critical historians can't approach sources in that way, automatically favouring one side against the other. Instead, every source has to be carefully weighed and evaluated.

That's the problem with the "history is written by the winners" maxim, which, by the way, is embraced without reservation by Dan Brown. It's a vulgarism, really. It's not terribly useful for anyone interested both in history and in accuracy. One problem is of course that neither winners nor losers ever have an exclusive copyright on the facts.

So, speaking of Dan Brown, and historical accuracy, here are just a couple of inaccuracies that made me laugh out loud in nerd-esque fashion:

quote:

"Fortunately for historians," Teabing said, "some of the gospels that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950s hidden in a cave near Qumran in the Judean desert."

fact:

The Dead Sea Scrolls are strictly Jewish documents. They have zero Christian content and zero Jesus content. They date back variously as far as 100 years before Jesus' crucifixion. (note to Dan Brown: Read them! They're interesting, for students of religious history. I hear you're into that kind of thing. For fun, go to Cleveland and take a look at one. I bet you can afford the trip.)

quote:

"Also rumored to be part of the [Sangreal] treasure is the legendary 'Q' Document—a manuscript that even the Vatican admits they believe exists."

fact:

Of course the Vatican believes that Q exists—it's in the Bible! (It's also online, by the way.) "Q" is shorthand for the German word Quelle or "source" and simply refers to the material that the gospels of Matthew and Luke have in common that they didn't crib from the gospel of Mark, or more precisely, the hypothetical document that they drew said material from. (The basic idea is that, since the common material didn't come from the gospel of Mark, it must have come from somewhere, as Matthew and Luke appear to have been working independently—though that can be credibly disputed. That and the fact that no one's ever claimed to see an actual copy of Q are what make it "hypothetical.")

quote continued:

"Allegedly, it is a book of Jesus' teachings, possibly written in his own hand."

"Writings by Christ Himself?"

"Of course," Teabing said. "Why wouldn't Jesus have kept a chronicle of His ministry? Most people did in those days."

fact:

Uh. Dude. No. Most people, the vast majority of people, almost certainly including the peasant Jesus, were illiterate.

I could go on but you get the idea. If the devil is in the details then maybe religious conservatives are right that that Devil is in this book. But what I like about Ehrman's review of the novel is that he takes pains to distance himself from those who have a religious bone to pick with Dan Brown and sticks to the historical problems with it.

Ehrman gives considerably attention to two fallacies of the novel that have wider implications.

The first is that Constantine created a Bible that superseded other testaments to Jesus' humanity with a fabrication—the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—of his divinity. Ehrman points out that one basic problem with this idea is that, of all the suriviving gospels, it is those four canonical ones that actually give the most weight to his humanity. The non-canonical gospels, contrary to the novel's presentation, put far more weight on Jesus' divinity than the canonical ones do. (Another basic problem is that Constantine had nothing to do with the formation of the Biblical canon.)

Another fallacy in the novel is that the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene is a "matter of historical record." This is just plain wrong. There is no suggestion of this in any documents that survive from antiquity, period. None. Nada. Zip. Not in the Bible, not in non-Biblical gospels, not in any outside sources. Zero.

And what about Jesus himself? What sort of contemporary (to Jesus) documentation is there of his life? Ehrman has worse news, for you, really, if you didn't know it already. There's none.

There are no eyewitness accounts of Jesus, no birth or other official records, nothing of that sort.

The first mentions of Jesus in pagan sources come after the first century. The first non-Christian Jewish mention of Jesus (by the historian Josephus) comes near the end of the first century as well. That means that the oldest and best historical records that we have of Jesus' life are the canonical gospels themselves (uncool, to the Dan Browns of this world, but sadly true), and those were written in the last three decades of the first centuries, or at least 40 years after his death, roughly. And, as Ehrman says, "This is not simply the view of Christian historians who have a high opinion of the New Testament and its historical worth; it is the view of all serious historians of antiquity of every kind, from committed evangelical Christians to hardcore atheists."

The noncanonical gospels are interesting in all kinds of ways, but they have significantly less to add to our historical picture of Jesus than even the canonical gospels. Ehrman demonstrates this fact with a nice overview of some of the greatest non-canonical hits, so to speak: the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (my personal favourite... the funniest Jesus text evah), the Gospel of Peter, the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter, and the Coptic Gospel of Thomas.

Ehrman goes on to argue that we are not left without methods for reconstructing the life of the historical Jesus, and gives a brief introduction to some of those methodologies. It is a well-written and clear section but suffice it to say that I am not quite as optimistic as he is that we can know very much about Jesus' historical life with great confidence. His historical existence and his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate constitute the extent of what cannot be seriously questioned, in my view. I'm all for advancing and arguing hypotheses about his life and ministry, but, in the end, our reach always exceeds our grasp, I think, in the historical Jesus game.

One more quote, neither Brown nor Ehrman this time, but Dale Allison (from his book Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet):

Modesty becomes us. We may well have our convictions... but whether our convictions constitute knowledge we can never discover. We simply do not know.

As historiographical principles go, that's not much of a unit shifter, is it.

For a more thorough Da Vinci debunking, see Laura Miller's Salon.com article "The Da Vinci crock".

one hand blogging.

I'm out of commission for a while. I'm typing this with one hand; don't expect wordy emails. No, I'm not copping Michael's moves, so don't call me a biter, unless you're talking about pavement. I have a tiny pneumothorax; dunno yet if they will have to tube it. My bike is in perfect shape. All praise is due to perfect stranger/good Samaritan Andrew Vaughan for taking me to the Dartmouth General in his car (and giving me change and a taxi chit, and taking my bike to my mom); he clearly has a gift for being first on the scene.

Update May 10: Another evening at the hospital. Good news is that they don't have to stick a needle into my chest. Bad news is that I cracked a bone in my hand. Now sporting a splint.

in da pub

Like, it's my birthday, y'all. Gus' Pub, tonight, 10pm for Doers+Maynards. Be there and bring squares.

wheel of time

One reason that the Dalai Lama is on my mind a lot lately is that, just over a week ago, I finally watched the Werner Herzog documentary Wheel of Time. The film is memorable not just for its portrayal of an aborted Kalachakra initiation in Dharamsala, and a successful one in Austria, but also for the images of hundreds if not thousands of Tibetan pilgrims making the kora at Mt. Kailash. I don't believe that I've seen any other film footage of the remote mountain (remote enough that in my three weeks in Tibet I didn't have the time or wherewithal to make the trip).

But the Dalai Lama. I've been thinking about him a lot lately. I think he's become a spiritual hero to me, despite my own misgivings. A couple of years ago, before my own three-week sojourn in Tibet, I studied Buddhism for a semester at the university where I work, and wrote a paper that contained some measured criticism of His Holiness. I wrote about "some ways in which a Western-favoured construction of Buddhism... is not purely a Western projection but has been shaped, encouraged, and indeed sold to the West by key Eastern figures, especially the Dalai Lama."

These include Buddhism as: “world religion” analogous to Christianity; in “dialogue” with Christianity rather than proselytizing; ethical/non-violent, thereby conducive to social reform; atheistic/rational and fully compatible with science; and having meditation as its essential practice.

Let's not even get into the D.L.'s homophobia and general sex-phobia (I know, I know, cut the guy some slack, he's a monk).

OK, OK, James, but having conceded all that, don't you have to admit that, hey, you are Western, you consider yourself a progressive, and at some level you really dig what the D.L. has to say?

Yup. Lately, when I hear His Holiness talking about tolerance and compassion, it does my strife-tired heart good. I think it's probably too cynical to say that he is simply pandering to the West. What's more, I really like what he has to say about personal spiritual development and how to learn about other religious traditions.

In a nutshell, the Dalai Lama says that you don't need to leave the tradition you were raised in to acquire an understanding of other traditions. You can remain a Christian, say, while acquiring the religious insights that Buddhism, for example, has to offer. Don't convert, he seems to say. Extend. Dialogue. Visit the world's spiritual sites. Read the world's spiritual classics. With understanding comes compassion and peace.

How can I argue with that? I don't know what it has to do with Buddhism as actually practiced in Tibet, say, but I dig the bit about cross-tradition pilgrimage, though I've only just begun to travel, really. Borobodur, the Wailing Wall, Al-Aqsa, are all on my before-I-die checklist.

Though no specific religious tradition lays a claim on it, I consider the Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima to be the most spiritually significant site that I've visited. Yet it didn't turn me into a pacifist in the strong ideological sense (give me another few years?). Tibet's oldest monastery, Samye, left a mark on me that I believe will be lifelong. Yet I feel no urge to convert to Buddhism.

Which fact prompts a side note. When I tell people that I went to Tibet and visited ten Buddhist monasteries, they ask me if I'm a Buddhist or if I plan to convert, as if that's perfectly cool. When I tell people that I've read the Qu'ran, am learning Arabic and continue to study Islam, people sometimes say, "So are you going to convert?" as if it's a joke, or sometimes: "You aren't converting, are you?" I wouldn't describe any of these individual people as bigots by any stretch, but the pattern that emerges is pretty ethnocentric/prejudiced, wouldn't you say?

And that brings me back to the sacred sites. Sometimes, I wish that I didn't need to be a Muslim to make a pilgrimage to the Kaaba. I don't imagine I'm going to make it there in my lifetime, much as would love to merge with those Muslim pilgrims the way that I was able to join the Tibetan Buddhist faithful at places like the Jokhang in Lhasa. (1000 metres above Lhasa, at the mountain-top site of Ganden Monastery, I touched the transcendent while making the kora with a Tibetan lama and monk and a Chinese nun, without being able to exchange more than a few words.) But I realize that all religions don't work the same way, and I respect that. And I have come to believe, despite frequent appearances to the contrary, that peace and compassion are at the core of all of the major traditions. Just as the Dalai Lama would say.

waving.

So today, Jade and I had our first swimming lesson. Learning to swim with one friend and an instructor is really the ideal situation. It's the best combination of support, motivation, and direction.

It was amazing how fast I progressed today to my first, flotation-belt-assisted attempt at a front crawl. My memories of childhood swimming lessons are ones of frustration—the genu valgum stage of my life was not the right one at which to attempt motion that my legs simply couldn't handle. (And my acrophobia didn't, and still doesn't, help my confidence when trying to float on my back, though it has receded somewhat in recent years.) It was a great feeling today when I started being able to sense the difference when my kicks were actually effective. I'm pretty sure that next week I'll be front-crawling unassisted.

blast from the past.

So, CBC Radio's Go! taped an episode in Halifax on Saturday, and I was in the studio audience. The occasion was the Halifax Comedy Festival and the special comedic guests were the consistently awful Bette MacDonald, the repulsive but occasionally funny Mike Bullard, and the charming and witty Shaun Majumder. There was also music from the absolutely luminous Jill Barber.

But the highlight for me was of course chatting with Brent afterwards... talking about the imminent demise of Brave New Waves, among other subjects. Of all my freelance gigs from my decade (1993-2002) in music journalism I miss my small part with BNW the most... I'll be sad to see the show go. (Nobody's said it better than Carl Wilson.)

So I've taken two weeks and some off from blogging, and it's good to be back. In the last couple of weeks I've written my final exam in my intro Arabic course, found a new mortgage... been dealing with, you know, life. But I still managed to catch a cool gig or two, saw some good movies, and thought a lot about the Dalai Lama. More about that later.

Hello, world, again.