Up against the wall

This post is going to be all over the map. What can I say, sync is inherently nonlinear.

Yesterday I was in the mood for a harder sound after a few days of listening to Emily Linge and Simon & Garfunkel, so I listened to Kill_mR_DJ's mashup of "Head Like a Hole" by Nine Inch Nails, "My Blood" by Twenty One Pilots, and instrumentals from an electronic group called 3OH!3. People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like:

"Head Like a Hole" made me think of William Wright's February 20 post "There's a hole in my bucket-face! AND Harry Marsh and the Sorcerer's Stone," which includes this doodle:

Nine Inch Nails, commonly abbreviated NIN, made me think of NINbad the Nailer, whose career is summarized as follows in "With":

Ninbad the Nailer -- there he stood
And did the only thing he could.

This is of course an allusion to Martin Luther, famous for nailing his 95 Theses to the church door and for saying "Here I stand; I can do no other" -- preferring to risk being burned as a heretic rather than recant. Say what you will about his theology, Luther was a badass, and I respect him. A lot of the "Head Like a Hole" lyrics actually fit him: Luther basically said to Pope Leo X, "I'd rather die than give you control," and the inveighing against "God Money" (not included in the mashup but prominent in the original) fits right in with the content of the 95 Theses against a church that was selling forgiveness in exchange for cold, hard cash. "God Money," together with the refrain "Bow down before the one you serve / You're going to get what you deserve," evokes the Sermon on the Mount: "No man can serve two masters . . . You cannot serve God and mammon," mammon being money.

And, what do you know, it turns out that NIN frontman Trent Reznor was raised Lutheran. You can't escape your roots.

I wasn't familiar with the Twenty One Pilots song, but looking up the lyrics, I see that they have certain Lutheran resonances as well:

Surrounded and
Up against a wall
I'll shred them all
And go with you
When choices end
You must defend
I'll grab my bat
And go with you

"When choices end / You must defend" -- "Here I stand; I can do no other." The line "Up against a wall" is something the two songs have in common:

God money, I'll do anything for you
God money, just tell me what you want me to
God money, nail me up against the wall
God money don't want everything, he wants it all

"Up against the wall" has an additional meaning in the synchronistic context of "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (see "Glimmerings, and disappearing stars, at the window"). When dry leaves are blown against a wall, they go up:

To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the housetop the coursers they flew
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too.

"Humpty Dumpty revisited" associates Humpty's "great fall" with falling autumn leaves. "To the top of the wall" suggests putting Humpty in his place again, and dry leaves that "mount to the sky" seem to be reversing the fall. This imagery made me think of the Moody Blues line "Like the rain rising from the sea." I'd forgotten that the song it's from also includes the repeated line "I've reached the top of my wall."

Since we've already brought so many of my childhood writings into this, why not throw in another. This was a "spellcheck poem," created by typing song lyrics into a word processor backwards, running spellcheck, and then adjusting the resulting word salad a bit to make it grammatical:

You shall forever think
yet thought's era of rhetoric is dead.
The nets of reason, the webs of speech are many,
and yet we think beyond the choking net.
Are we wise?
A falling leaf, a dying man:
Both sink against the wind, I say.

The idea of a falling leaf sinking "against the wind" ties right in with the St. Nicholas poem, where the wind blows the fallen leaves up into the sky.

Speaking of the St. Nicholas poem, it says of St. Nick that "his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot" and "the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath." Yet "His eyes -- how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! . . . a right jolly old elf." And of course, he goes up and down chimneys.

When I was writing "I, jowly Chim-Chim, ate an Elvis," I ran a web search for chim chim. Most of the hits were not for the Speed Racer character but for "Chim Chim Cher-ee," the song sung by the chimney sweep (Dick Van Dyke) in Mary Poppins. The sweep sings:

Though I spends me time in the ashes and smoke
In this 'ole wide world there's no 'appier bloke

Coming back to falling leaves for a moment, the Chim-Chim post quoted one of my brother's stories with an "intermission." Looking through my copies of old stories, I found only one other with such an intermission. Here it is:

"Well, the sheath was named after the sword."

"And the sword?" asked Pron.

"The sword was named after the

INTERMISSION: The Autumn Leaf

With it's Red and golden fire
Comes the leaf swirling swooping on the breeze
Down in between the barren trees
With a dive all glory flies
And the leaf lays crumpled on the ground.

END OF INTERMISSION

sheath."

"That's sort of weird," said Pron.

William Wright recently posted "Bigfoot: Seek and it shall find you," the title coming from a T-shirt he got for Father's Day. I commented "Fact check: true" and liked to my post "Bigfoot? Bigfoot." That post begins with a reference to an older post, "Ask for a mini T. rex, and ye shall receive a mini T. rex" and goes on to describe a similar experience, only with Bigfoot rather than a mini T. rex.

I've been reading through the Book of Mormon a few chapters a day. Today I just happened to read 3 Nephi 10-14. Included there is basically the entire Sermon on the Mount, nearly word for word, including this bit:

No man can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and Mammon (3 Ne. 13:24).

God? Money? Bow down before the one you serve. Then, in the next chapter:

Ask, and it shall be given unto you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened (3 Ne. 14:7-8).

No conditions are attached to this promise. He doesn't say, "Unless you ask for something stupid, like Bigfoot or a mini T. rex."

Why is being unforgiving an unforgivable sin?

And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if ye do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses (Mark 11:25-26).

Discussions of the "unforgivable sin" usually focus on the sin against the Holy Ghost, but this passage from Mark (also Matt. 6:14-15) seems to indicate that being unforgiving is also unforgivable: If you don't forgive others, God will not forgive you.

Isn't that surprising? Failing to forgive is such a relatable sin, something that comes so naturally to just about everyone, that it is counterintuitive to say that it is less forgivable than other, seemingly more serious, sins. For example, if a rapist repents, he will be forgiven; but if his victim fails to forgive him, she will not be forgiven. Isn't that a bit shocking?

I suppose the most natural interpretation of this passage is that if you want God to forgive you, you have to forgive others, because it's only fair. I don't think that cuts it as an explanation, though. We're talking about forgiveness here, which is by definition not about being fair, but about extending mercy to those who deserve condemnation. "I can't forgive you, because it wouldn't be fair"? But it's never fair. If it were fair, it would be vindication, not forgiveness.

My best guess is that forgiveness is an absolute requirement because Heaven is not an individual state, like Buddhist enlightenment, but membership in the Family of God, and as such it inherently involves relationships with other former sinners. It's not that God views unforgiveness as "the worst sin" and insists on "punishing" it; it's that, as a matter of spiritual and psychological fact, one simply cannot participate in Heaven until one can freely and fully forgive.

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Sync note: Opening up BibleGateway to look up this post's text led to the syncs that resulted in the post "Many sparrows, again, and other sync links." That post prominently features figs and mentions my finding figs growing on the wall of the abandoned restaurant, as related in "Owl time, and cold noodles." In "Owl time," I said that the figs made me think of Mark 11:13. The passage I was looking for for this post also turns out to be from Mark 11.

The 40-day fast

In my December 2 post "Was baptism an ordeal," I mention Jesus' "David Blaine-like 40-day fast" just after his baptism.

A few days later, on December 5, I followed a Synlogos link to the Didactic Mind post "It's not a mystery at all," which linked to a video by one David Wood called "Muslim Scholar Warns about 'Avalanche' of Apostasy." For some reason, I clicked on the link, didn't watch the video, but did scroll down in the comments a bit, and found this: "I appreciate how David is casually open about the fact he is a psychopath and his history but has been healed and exalted through Christ!"

That piqued my interest enough to go to David Wood's main YouTube page and watch the featured video "Why I Am a Christian."

It is, as advertised, a psychopath's story of coming to Christ. Wood casually and unemotionally tells the story of how he attempted to murder his own father with a ball-peen hammer just for the hell of it, and of how he eventually became a Christian after realizing that his narcissism was philosophically incompatible with nihilism (because if nothing mattered at all, then neither did he himself). I take it all with a grain of salt (it is, after all, a tale told by a psychopath), but it's a compelling story.

Before his conversion, Wood had a Christian cellmate who used to fast, and Wood always tried to one-up him by fasting just a bit longer. Finally his cellmate goes for a 40-day water-only fast (because Jesus fasted for that long), and Wood decides to do 42 days. It is at this point that the prison authorities intervene, thinking he is attempting suicide by self-starvation, put him in solitary confinement, and force-feed him.

So the sync fairies are drawing my attention to the idea of a 40-day fast, and how it tests the limits of what the human body can endure. (Wood says something like, "Here I was trying to be like Jesus, and they thought I was trying to commit suicide!")

The general rule is that a person can live for three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Fasts longer than that are certainly possible -- David Blaine famously survived for 44 days on nothing but water -- but they clearly belong to the category "death-defying stunt."

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When Moses was receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai, "he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water" (Ex. 34:28; see also Deut. 9:9). After seeing the Golden Calf and breaking the stone tables, he did it again: "I fell down before the Lord, as at the first, forty days and forty nights: I did neither eat bread, nor drink water, because of all your sins" (Deut. 9:18). It is not clear whether he ate or drank anything between the first 40 days and the second, so it may well have been a continuous 80-day fast. Either way, Moses' surviving this fast or fasts was strictly miraculous; not even David Blaine can go 40 days without water.

Long after Moses, Elijah would duplicate this feat: An angel having provided "a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water" (1 Kgs. 19:6), Elijah "did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God" (19:8).

As for Jesus, all three synoptic Gospels mention a 40-day period of temptation in the wilderness just after his baptism, but only Matthew and Luke tell us that Jesus fasted. Matthew says, "And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred" (Matt. 4:2). Luke says, "And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered" (Luke 4:2). Both accounts focus on food and hunger and say nothing about water, so it is possible that Jesus' fast was (just barely) humanly possible, a water-only fast like David Blaine's. Given the obvious parallels to Moses and Elijah, though, it seems more likely that it was a total fast, without even water, and that Jesus' surviving the ordeal was miraculous.

That Jesus should have done something miraculous is scarcely surprising, but the 40-day fast is made puzzling by the immediate context of his temptation in the wilderness. Here is one of the ways in which the devil tempted him.

Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, "If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, 'He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.'"

Jesus said unto him, "It is written again, 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God'" (Matt 4:5-7; cf. Luke 4:9-12).

The essence of this temptation seems to be to do something which would, in the ordinary course of nature, be suicidal, trusting God to intervene with a miracle and save you. And while God may well be willing to intervene with miracles to save your life, it would be a sin to "test" God by deliberately and artificially creating a life-threatening situation from which to be saved.

But isn't that just what Jesus did by choosing to go out in the desert and eat (and possibly drink) nothing for 40 days? Isn't that every bit as suicidal as jumping off the top of the Temple, and doesn't it "tempt God" in the same way? Why was the 40-day fast more acceptable to God than the proposed Temple jump?

One difference, I suppose, is that the Temple is in a public place. If Jesus had jumped off the Temple and been saved by angels, this would have been a public demonstration, "proving" to the people that he was the Son of God. Jesus was generally very careful not to give this kind of public demonstration, working miracles in private and often specifically instructing people not to spread the word. This may be why he chose to conduct his 40-day fast out in the wilderness; he would later tell those that fast to make an effort to "appear not unto men to fast" (Matt. 6:18), which would scarcely have been possible in the case of an extreme fast such as this one. No amount of "anointing thy head and washing thy face" (Matt. 6:17) could have covered up the fact that he was on the point of dying of starvation.

One other possibility is that Jesus never fasted for 40 days at all. Mark, on which Matthew and Luke are dependent, says only that he was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days and says nothing about a fast. We learn elsewhere in the Gospels that Jesus and his disciples were specifically noted for not fasting (Mark 2:18, Matt. 9:14). When compared with John the Baptist, who did fast, Jesus came across as "a man gluttonous, and a winebibber" (Matt. 11:19, Luke 7:34). Aside from the temptation story, the only other indication in the Gospels that Jesus ever fasted is when he casts out a devil which his disciples could not cast out and then explains that "this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting" (Matt. 17:21).

The first temptation in the wilderness was for the hungry Jesus to turn stones into bread. Combining this with the fact that he was in the wilderness for 40 days, and that both Moses and Elijah had fasted for 40 days, Matthew and Luke may have jumped to the conclusion that Jesus had done the same.

Distinctive vocabulary of each of the four Gospels

A reader has provided me with a spreadsheet of all the words in the King James Version of the New Testament, with the number of occurrences of each word in each book. Using this data, I have put together these lists of the most distinctive words in each Gospel.

To be included in the list for a given Gospel, a word had to (1) occur at least 10 times in that Gospel and (2) have a frequency (per 1000 words) at least twice as high as its frequency in any of the other three Gospels.

• Matthew: begat, deliver, end, field, gather, heaven, hypocrites, multitudes, O, prison, reward, righteous, talents, think, wherefore, wise

• Mark: asked, began, hands, immediately, James, looked, ship, straightway, such, themselves, unclean

• Luke: angel, certain, company, named, pass, returned, rich, sight, ten, years, Zacharias

• John: abide, am, answered, bear, because, beginning, believe, believed, believeth, born, die, disciple, doeth, ever, except, Father, feast, flesh, glorified, greater, hast, honour, I, Jews, judge, keep, knew, know, known, Lazarus, life, lifted, light, love, loved, me, might, mine, myself, now, Philip, record, scripture, seek, seen, seeth, sent, sheep, Simon, sin, true, truth, verily, water, whence, whither, whom, witness, words, work, world, yet

There's obviously a lot of noise here, but one can still see the familiar areas of emphasis of each Gospel. Matthew is the most moralistic (righteous, hypocrites, reward, prison). Mark is the fastest-paced (immediately, straightway) and has a special focus on exorcism (unclean spirits). Nothing in particular stands out about Luke. John is, of course, the most distinctive; aside from the familiar themes (believe, know, life, light, love, truth), we can see that it is the Gospel in which Jesus talks the most about himself (I, me, mine, myself, am). It is interesting to note that sin (singular) occurs almost exclusively in John, while sins and sinners are more typical of the Synoptics. This is consistent with the idea (see here) that John means something else by sin than "moral transgression."

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It can also be interesting to look at the words that meet the converse requirements: (1) occurring at least 10 times in each of the other three Gospels and (2) being no more than half as frequent in the target gospel as in any of the other three. No words meet these requirements for the Gospel of Matthew, but here are the lists for the other three.

• Mark: hast, law, light, nor, prophet, then

• Luke: answered, disciples, king, saith, sea, verily

• John: against, began, children, devils, enter, fell, great, house, kingdom, multitude, or, over, pass, scribes, their, upon, wife

We can see here how John differs from the Synoptics in hardly mentioning the kingdom of God, which (with its Matthean variant kingdom of heaven) seems in the Synoptics to be the center of Jesus' whole message. The complete absence of devils (plural; the devil is mentioned about equally in all the Gospels) reflects the fact that there are, uniquely, no exorcisms in the Fourth Gospel.

Matthew's Messiah is the most "Davidic"; John's, the most "Samaritan"

As discussed elsewhere on this blog, Jews and Samaritans had different understandings of what sort of person the Messiah was supposed to be. The entire Messianic tradition of the Samaritans is derived from the 18th chapter of Deuteronomy. Their Messiah is a prophet like Moses -- the only prophet besides Moses, in fact -- who will tell us all things. The Jews, on the other hand, added to this the Messianic writings of the prophets, in which David has largely eclipsed Moses as the Messiah's most important precursor. If the Samaritan Messiah is essentially a prophet like Moses, his Jewish counterpart is primarily a king like David. The two visions are not mutually exclusive -- both peoples expected the Messiah to be both a prophet and a king -- but they represent very marked differences in emphasis.

Corresponding differences in emphasis are found in the Four Gospels. A writer with a more "Samaritan" idea of the Messiah might be expected to mention Moses more often, and to give the Samaritans themselves a more prominent role in the Gospel story. A writer whose views were more traditionally "Jewish," on the other hand, would mention David more often and speak more of kings and kingdoms.

I searched each of the Gospels for the strings "Moses," "Samari-," "David," and "king-." (Why not also "Jew" and "prophet" to contrast with "Samaritan" and "king"? Well, naturally most of Jesus' story takes place among the Jews, so of course every Gospel will mention them a lot. "Prophet" is also not useful for distinguishing between the two Messianic visions, since the Samaritans see the Messiah as being primarily a prophet, while the Jewish Messiah is based on the writings of the prophets.) Here are the results.

To control for the varying lengths of the Gospels, the numbers indicate
what percentage of verses in each Gospel contain the target string.

The pattern is clear, and confirms the impression I already had. The Fourth Gospel ("of John") emphasizes Moses and the Samaritans, while downplaying David and Jesus' role as king; Matthew shows the opposite pattern; and Mark and Luke are intermediate.

I should mention that it is already my opinion, for reasons unrelated to this issue, that the Fourth is the most trustworthy of the Gospels and that Matthew is the least so.

Notes on John 3:31-36

This section could conceivably be a continuation of the quote from John the Baptist which begins in v. 27, but I think this is highly unlikely. The only real evidence in favor of that reading is the reference to the "wrath of God" in v.36 (on which more below). Leaving aside that one line, everything in this passage echoes what has been said earlier in the same chapter by Jesus and by the author, and none of it sounds natural in the mouth of John the Baptist. I take it that this is the author writing in his own voice again, as in vv. 13-21.

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[31] He that cometh from above is above all: he that is of the earth is earthly, and speaketh of the earth: he that cometh from heaven is above all.

The Greek word (ἄνωθεν) that is translated as "from above" here is the same one that is rendered "again" in v. 3: "Except a man be born again [or 'born from above'], he cannot see the kingdom of God." (A similar sort of polysemy exists in English, as when we speak of doing something "all over again," "from the top.") The two different translations seem right in their respective contexts, since Nicodemus's reply ("Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb?") clearly has reference to being born again, whereas v. 31 is about "he that cometh from heaven." Nevertheless, v. 31 is almost certainly intended to allude both to "he that came down from heaven" (v. 13) and to the importance of being "born again" (v. 3).

A strictly literal translation would be "he that is from the earth, is from the earth, and speaketh from the earth" ("ἐκ τῆς γῆς," repeated three times), and the immediate context suggests that Jesus is being contrasted with John. As great as John is, he is still "from the earth" and speaks from that perspective.

Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, "Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he" (Matthew 11:11). While I use Matthew with caution, considering it the least reliable of the Gospels, I consider this to be an authentic saying, on the grounds that Matthew would never have put such problematic (from the Matthean perspective) words in Jesus' mouth. While Matthew and Luke deny that Jesus had a biological father, their fanciful nativity stories would still include Jesus "among them that are born of women" -- and thus, according to Matthew 11:11, not greater than John the Baptist.

The Fourth Gospel shows us the correct interpretation of Matthew 11:11. Jesus was "from heaven" not because there was anything unusual about the circumstances of his biological birth -- he was a son of man, born of a woman -- but because he had been born again, born from above, born of the spirit, born of God. Though John was the one who recognized this transformation in Jesus -- seeing the Spirit of God descend on him and stay -- he was apparently not "born again" himself. John represents the highest peaks of holiness attainable without being born again. In a way, we might think of him as Jesus' "Virgil" -- his role being analogous to the one given to that poet in Dante's Comedy. (In fact, if we substitute Virgil's name for John's in Matthew 11:11, doesn't it ring just as true? It is perhaps what Jesus would have said had he been born a Roman rather than a Jew.)

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[32] And what he hath seen and heard, that he testifieth; and no man receiveth his testimony. [33] He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true.

This echoes what Jesus says to Nicodemus: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness" (v. 11). "Testimony" and "witness" translate the same Greek word (μαρτυρίαν). This is further evidence that this passage is the author writing in his own voice; John the Baptist was not privy to Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus and could not have quoted it.

Immediately after "no man receiveth his testimony" comes a statement about "he that hath received his testimony"! How to resolve this obvious contradiction?

The most natural interpretation is to read v. 32 as a bit of commonplace hyperbole, actually meaning something like "very few receive his testimony." Greek reference works (qv) seem not to countenance such a reading, though. We are told that οὐδείς (translated as "no man," but more literally "no one and nothing") "'shuts the door' objectively and leaves no exceptions," that it "categorically excludes, declaring as a fact that no valid example exists." A negation that was qualified in any way would use μηδείς rather than οὐδείς. In other words, v. 32 means "no one at all receives his testimony" -- not the sort of expression that would be used hyperbolically.

Could v. 33 be counterfactual ("Anyone who received his testimony would be setting to his seal...")? I don't think so, since it is in the indicative mood. What then can it mean?

"Set to his seal that God is true" means "confirmed that God is truthful or trustworthy." So perhaps the meaning is that Jesus' claims are so extraordinary that no one at all takes Jesus' word for it that they are true. Whoever seems to be "receiving his testimony" -- i.e., believing what he says because he says it -- actually believes not because of Jesus' testimony but because God has confirmed the truth to them directly. "He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me." (John 12:44; cf. Matthew 10:40, Mark 9:37, and Luke 9:48, all of which have "receive" in place of "believe on").

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[34] For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God: for God giveth not the Spirit by measure unto him. [35] The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand.

"My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me" (John 7:16). The idea of Jesus having been "sent" by God is characteristic of the Fourth Gospel, occurring only in a few isolated passages of the Synoptics.

For "not . . . by measure" read "without measure." Others have been inspired, but only Jesus was fully inspired, to the extent that his words were the words of God.

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[36] He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

The first clause is simply a restatement of v. 16. The final part, about "the wrath of God" seems out of place. It is the only occurrence of the word "wrath" (ὀργὴ) in the Fourth Gospel, and one of only five occurrences in the Gospels as a whole. Mark 3:5 has Jesus look around with anger at those who would criticize him for healing a man on the Sabbath, and Luke 21:23 has Jesus speak of "great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people" as part of an apocalyptic prophecy. The other two instances quote John the Baptist execrating the Pharisees and Sadducees who had come to be baptized: "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" (Matthew and Luke 3:7).

All in all, this does seem to be language more typical of John the Baptist than of the author of the Fourth Gospel, and some commentators do read all of vv. 27-36 as a quotation from John. For the reasons given above, I stand by my opinion that vv. 31-36 are the author's own words and not John's, but the context does render probable an allusion to John and his distinctive way of speaking. Perhaps we should imagine quotation marks around the last clause. He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but -- as John, speaking "from the earth," would put it -- "the wrath of God abideth on him." This is the sort of thing I often do in my own writing -- quoting or alluding to someone made salient by context even when it means using phraseology with which I would normally have reservations -- so I can easily imagine the evangelist doing the same thing.