While reading the book Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman (p 202-203), I came across an account of maybe the worlds first instance of Gaslighting. In about 250 CE, a man named Celsus, who was a pagan, wrote the following anti-Christian words:
And everywhere they speak in their writings of the tree of life …..I imagine because their master was nailed to a cross and was a carpenter by trade. So that if he happened to be thrown off a cliff or pushed into a pit or suffocated by strangling, or if he had been a cobbler or stonemason or a blacksmith, there would have been a cliff of life above the heavens, or a pit of resurrection, or a rope of immortality, or a blessed stone, or an iron of love, or a holy hide of leather. (Against Celsus 6, 34)
Celsus is making fun of Christians for following a carpenter. He gets pretty nasty going on about the tree of life being related to the cross and Jesus being a carpenter, and if he had been a stonemason maybe Christians would have a blessed stone, and so on.
An apologist of the time named Origen wrote a rebuttal. But he didn’t explain why a carpenter could be the Christ, instead he denied it all together
“[Celsus is] blind to this, that in none of the Gospels current in the Church is Jesus himself ever described as being a carpenter.”
Maybe Origen never saw a copy of what we call the Gospel of Mark, and never read Mark 6:3. But notice his clever wording: “none of the Gospels current in the Church…”. Ehrman states that there are several early copies of the Mark manuscript from this same time that had an altered text, where the words “son of” was inserted, so that it reads “Is this not the son of the carpenter”, making it agree more closely with Matthew 13:55.
It is believed that early apologist scribes added these words to counter the anti-Christian rhetoric that Jesus could not be the Christ, as he was “just a carpenter” So Origen could say what he did, and be technically correct.
This looks like a early example of Gaslighting, or as they called it back then, Oil lighting!
Ha! So it’s not just a Mormon thing!
Not a Cougar,
It’s a thing that just about every group that has any belief (or even disbelief) eventually finds itself doing to some extent. Totalitarian regimes erase people from photographs. Trump’s wall changes every week but was always the same. A recent movie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg asserts that the word “freedom” doesn’t occur in the Constitution. Elizabeth Warren claimed she never used her Native American identity on official forms. Anti-Mormons (specifically the CES letter guy) will have you believe that the Book of Mormon describes honeybees in the Americas (or will effectively rewrite any number of statements or documents). Liberal jurists will try to convince you that the Constitution protects rights without naming them, and conservative jurists will try to convince you that the founding fathers contemplated semi-automatic weapons. Sometimes it’s an actual rewrite, and sometimes it’s convincing you that words don’t mean what they obviously mean. This is, unfortunately, how groups often handle cognitive dissonance: they deny its there to begin with.
One wonders if the Greek of Origen/Celsus and the Greek of Mark both use the same word. Mark’s word, tektōn, has secondary meanings beyond simply “wood-worker.”
John Jenkins, you are making me work way too hard on this! I looked up six different Greek manuscripts, and each one used tektōn in both Mark and Matthew. From wikipedia: The Ancient Greek noun tektōn (τέκτων) is a common term for an artisan/craftsman, in particular a carpenter, wood-worker, mason, builder or teacher. The term is frequently contrasted with an iron-worker, or smith (χαλκεύς) and the stone-worker or mason (λιθολόγος, λαξευτής).
Origen was living in Caesarea when he wrote his rebuttal to Celsus. Scholars think that Origen had a couple of texts of Mark available to him, but it is interesting that there appear to be several textual variances of the Gospels as used by people in Caesarea; so much so that some scholars have proposed some sort of Caesarean textual variant. It is possible that Origen was working from a textual variant that included the “son of” modification. Still, I think it most likely that he had available to him the Alexandrian text, in addition to whatever other text he had, which does not have the “son of” variation. It could have been ignorance, whitewashing, or error.
Dsc says, “A recent movie about Ruth Bader Ginsburg asserts that the word ‘freedom’ doesn’t occur in the Constitution.”
Actually, in context this may not be what the movie says (I think, see further down), and this assertion is surprisingly similar to the exchange in the OP between the critic and the apologist.
I’m not sure if Dsc has seen the movie or not. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t say from my own experience what is actually in it.
A quick Google search reveals an online discussion in which one side says RBG doesn’t know the Constitution and the other says her quote is taken out of context, that she was referring to the Constitution as originally ratified, without the amendments, in which the statement purportedly is correct.
How is this relevant to the OP? Well, we have actual video that anyone can watch and see, and we still can’t get a consensus in the community on what it said, and what it meant. It should be no surprise that in an era of hand copied documents in 250 CE that people did not agree on certain details that are recorded but aren’t central or recurring themes, namely the question of whether or not Jesus was a carpenter.
The behaviors of the critic and the apologist in the OP are still seen today. The are some decent critical arguments, and some apologetics that are worth considering as well. But a large portion of the arguments on both sides are based on weak evidence, flawed logic, emotional appeals, etc.
Mocking Christians for following a carpenter is a bit like accusing the church of being a corporation, its leaders of acting like business men, or its founder of seeking treasure, all ad hominem arguments. ( Of course, apologists are also known to use ad hominem on occasion.)
But saying the Jesus wasn’t a carpenter (contrary to the record in Mark) could be similar to apologists changing the narrative to evade problems from new evidence. Native Americans weren’t primarily Lamanites; polygamy was just a way to help the poor widows; etc etc etc. Or it could simply be a misunderstanding of the text of Mark, just as Dsc may have misunderstood the movie about RBG.
I don’t want to risk threadjacking, so I’ll try to respond to Rockwell and bring it back on topic. The oral argument scene from “On the Basis of Sex” doesn’t make sense if the context is the unamended 1787 Constitution unless the argument is somehow about the law as applicable between 1787 and 1791. Besides, the words “man” or “male” likewise don’t appear in the 1787 Constitution, while “liberty”, which at least can be a synonym for freedom, does. If the scene (which I admit, I have not seen) is as the director described it, showing that the Constitution has been improved over time, then the argument was better suited for an ERA rally than a courtroom.
To me, that’s an example of the kind of gaslighting that people in general are prone to do: go back and adjust the context of the conversation in order to make sense of it. Mixing fictionalized events in a mostly-historical account also contributes.
DSC, here is the commentary from the film’s screenwriter on that scene:
“The scene is about something I came to appreciate while writing On the Basis of Sex—how America is always trying to “form a more perfect union.” The amendments to the Constitution are evidence of that. The First Amendment introduced the word “freedom” to the Constitution. The 14th added the word “equal.” etc.
And by the way, I’m delighted that even before the movie has come out, it has people discussing the finer points of constitutional law. I hope the reactions to the movie are as thought-provoking as the reactions to the trailer.”
I see no particular reason to disbelieve that explanation, which is perfectly accurate (and is anyway a rhetorical tack we know RBG has taken before, such as in the VMI decision). I also see no particular reason to beleive that an argument about the evolution of the constitution over time wouldn’t belong in a courtroom. I find it especially interesting that you’re willing to go so far as to call something “gaslighting” when you 1) have apparently not actually seen the thing, just a single line in a trailer, 2) apparently did not bother to look it up and understand the contriversy before using it a an example, and 3) don’t seem to have any particular expertise in constitutional interpretation or argument.
This whole exchange is an example of SOMETHING, to be sure, but hardly an example of gaslighting or trying to whitewash the past. It may be very convenient for you to be able to dismiss any argument you want with a vague “everybody does it” without attempting to actually evaluate those arguments.
JY,
The entire “living constitution” interpretation is an attempt to whitewash the past and pretend that the Constitution was intended to change meaning automatically. I have seen living constitutionalists quote Thomas Jefferson to support the notion that he supported expanding the constitution by judicial decisions. But Jefferson explicitly denounced amendment by construction and favored amendment by popular decision: “I had rather ask an enlargement of power from the nation where it is found necessary, than to assume it by a construction which would make our powers boundless. our peculiar security is in the possession of a written constitution. let us not make it a blank paper by construction.“ (Letter to Wilson Cary Nicholas).
The notion that the amended constitution supports judicially enlarging rights, expanding powers of government, etc. is to claim for Article III of the Constitution victories that were achieved through Article V. It is absolutely gaslighting: it tries to convince us that a judge changing the meaning of the constitution is equivalent to amending the constitution. Stiepelman’s explanation (which, by the way, I have not heard one person who has seen it say that the full scene clears up that issue) doesn’t solve the larger problem. Perhaps you’ve seen the movie? If so, please enlighten us how this plays out.
And to fictionalize a scene in order to let a fictionalized version of Ginsburg beat up straw men in a biopic invites the same kind of rewriting of history in people’s minds as the mistaken notion that Sarah Palin ever said “I can see Russia from my house”.
Revisionist histories allow judicial liberals to wave their hands and pretend that the reasoning in Lochner v New York is somehow different from the reasoning in Roe v Wade. It’s the kind of gaslighting that convinces you that you can trust unelected judges to overrule the elected branches based on “constitutional” principles that are nowhere expressed in the constitution, except that only the right kinds of judges should do that.
So no, I haven’t seen the film. Have you? Yes, I knew about Stiepalman’s explanation. It doesn’t fix the problem. And, I know a thing or two about constitutional interpretation.
So, was Jesus a carpenter? Don’t know, don’t care; mildly interesting since I enjoy carpentry.
Blah post that lacked content and thoughtfulness
Steve, Blah comment that lacked content and thoughtfulness.