[Vision2020] Test Post

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:

I was distressed to see that even though I saved my Response to Don Nelson 
as plain text, the coding still appeared even on the archived version on 
the web.  (Rose, code still appears in your postings, too.) So I'm trying 
this again and asking for advise from those out there with more computer 
expertise.

To the Editor:

       In recent letters to The Daily News Don Nelson, with no expertise 
except his own bravado, makes some incredible claims about the New 
Testament. Just because a church father said that Mark got his gospel story 
from Peter does not make it so.  And if the author of Matthew was an 
eyewitness to the events, why did he copy Mark’s gospel almost word for 
word over 70 percent of the time?
       With regard to the issue of anti-Semitism and Mel Gibson’s movie, 
why does Matthew add a passage that has been used by Christians through the 
ages to brand the Jews as “Christ killers”?  This passage is suspect 
because the operative words“his blood be upon us [Jews]”--are lifted right 
out of the Greek translation of 2 Kings 1.16.  Matthew does this so 
frequently and so incautiously that he compromises the meaning of 
“fulfilled” prophecy, particularly with regard to the Virgin Birth, where 
the Greek translation unfortunately has a fatal error.
       Nelson claims that Gibson’s deviations from the Gospel account are 
“irrelevant.” Scholars have traced most of these extra scenes to the 
visions of Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), who Gibson says “supplied 
me with stuff I never would have thought of.” Gibson considers her a saint 
and wears one of her relics. In Emmerich’s visions the high priest Caiaphas 
appears as one who is in league with Satan and the defining feature of the 
Jews are their long noses, and the more bent the nose the more evil the 
Jew.When Gibson says that he doesn’t consider Emmerich to be anti-Semitic, 
he is clearly admitting that he doesn’t have a clue about what hatred of 
Jews is all about.
       Michael Medved’s defense that Gibson’s movie is not anti-Semitic 
because it portrays Jews such as Jesus and the two Marys favorably also 
wildly misses the mark.  The Gospel accounts were written 40-90 years after 
the events.  Christians were being subjected to Roman persecution and their 
fervent hope that many Jews would embrace their religion had been 
dashed.  It makes sense, as many New Testament scholar propose, that there 
was a deliberate attempt to make the Jews responsible for Jesus’ death 
rather than the Romans, who obviously carried out the execution on the 
orders of Pilate, who, contrary the Gospel accounts, was so wicked that 
even Rome had to recall him from Judea.
         It is terribly naïve to believe that texts, especially those that 
have evangelical purposes, do not contain manipulation of facts and 
political motivations.  It is also naïve to think that acting on literal 
readings of the Bible will not have devastating effects, especially with 
regard to events in the Middle East.

For more on Gibson’s film see www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/madmax.htm.  For 
general dangers of fundamentalism see 
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/parallels.htm, and for Hindu fundamentalism in 
particular see www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/hindfund.htm.


Nick Gier, Moscow


"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be 
discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part 
by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the 
interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual 
life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and 
art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts." 
--Max Planck

Nicholas F. Gier
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
http://users.moscow.com/ngier/home/index.htm
208-883-3360/882-9212/FAX 885-8950
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/ift/index.htm