I often wonder if, two thousand years from now, President Bush and The War of The Towers will be regarded as a largely mythological story by the "skeptics" and all the smart set.

Lovely.

Below is a copy of a Letter to the Editor that I sent to the Minneapolis Star Tribune in response to an article dated October 30 1999 regarding the Jesus Project.

I had been aroused to write because of a JP quote (which I have since lost unfortunately) -- where a recent widow who wanted to know if she would ever be reunited with her dead husband after her own death -- was rudely shot down by the JS scholars in the article.

George Washington was originally an officer in the British army. Let's assume he never changed sides; after all, we have no reliable witnesses. The few documents could easily be faked. Starting from that premise, let's throw out everything that he reportedly said or did as an American general.

This is essentially the scholarship methodology of the Jesus Seminar, a group a liberal professors who start with the assumption that Christ is not divine, that nothing miraculous or inexplicable happened, and that he was not resurrected. By laying down an anti-Christian agenda and then working backwards they conclude Jesus said hardly anything attributed to him.

Real scholarship begins with an open-minded study of the actual text as it was written, in the context of the time, and compared in style and form to other writings of the era. C.S. Lewis observed that the gospels read like reportage more than any other kind of ancient writing. Surely an invented story would not have included the inconvenient fact that women (who were considered unreliable witnesses) first discovered the empty tomb?

Members of the Seminar are frank about their anti-Christian bias. The October 30 article reports the Seminar saying that "false promises" should not be offered to a widow who is desperate to hear of a heaven where she'll be reunited with her husband. What a cruel attempt to destroy her hope.

The JP gambit is detestable for its acadmic dishonesty. Its plainly admitted agenda is to lead people to atheism under the guise of Christian scholarship.

What about all those records found in Minas Morgul? Those M accounts are vital in understanding how silly and weak men can be, after all.

The orcs may not have been very well educated, but they knew how to take notes. And they saw the Nazgul up close, so their observations count. Just because Tolkein dismissed them in compiling the story.....

No,no,you're all wrong,it was about the PIPEWEED,people!
it's all there if you just look!!The Old Took owned the pipeweed monoply in the Shire,Frodo,Pippin and Merry were related by BLOOD to the oppresive oligarch and they just "happen" to hook up with legitamate king who's ancestors were deposed due to vote fraud in Illian!?!Now how likely is that,huuh?
Obviously a conspiracy!Aragorn gets the throne,those money grubbing little hobbits(c'mon,be honest,you know what I mean)get the monoply in Gondor and Sauron is painted as some kind of tyrant and get's shafted!Look,after the last war,how many orcs and goblins starved because of those sanctions on Morder?Did this not justify any means by Sauron to bring social justice to his poeple??
PIPEWEED,people,marketed to children in Rohan and Gondor,just for profit!Saruman tried to warn them,but he was only an academic intellectual with tenure,what he could he do against the Establishment!"Oh,Saruman",they said his education is in magic,what does he know about economics?

And you see the result.

M:

Obviously, these "Rangers" were nothing but a guerilla campaign against the rule of Denathor. It's also clear that the heroic death (and acknowledgement of Aragorn's divine right) of Boromir was a fabrication in G sources; we can well guess how Boromir actually died, alone with Aragorn in the wilderness.

And Aragorn was in no position to poison Denethor, but who was? The unfavored - unjustly, we are told, but by whom! - younger son. Aragorn rewards him with rule of a city and a marriage forced upon Eowyn - a canny move to hold the Rohinim, loyal to the 'Stewards' line, down after their failed support of him resulted in her injury and the death of their king.

Does anyone else see the irony of a parodying the attempts of a group of theologians to debunk the historical truth of a religious myth by comparing it to a work of fiction?

Even works of fiction have real authors.

Before textual critics dared to question the authorship Bible about 125 years ago, they went for the next holiest books, Homer's Iliad & Odyssey. (I think Homeric criticism is about 100 years ahead of the Bible.) The theories ranged widely over the years and now the consensus is that one man, "Homer," actually wrote (or at least composed) the Iliad & Odyssey. Critical biblical scholarship will eventually meander back to the pre-enlightenment view that the books of the Bible were most likely written by their traditional authors.

Brian:

And the nitwittery about Shakespeare is legendary.

"Real scholarship begins with an open-minded study of the actual text as it was written, in the context of the time, and compared in style and form to other writings of the era."

So it is not possible to perform real scholarship on the Iliad unless you are open to the idea that the Greek pantheon of gods really exists and that they influenced events in the battle for Troy exactly as described?

"C.S. Lewis observed that the gospels read like reportage more than any other kind of ancient writing."

And we all know how accurate reportage is. Imagine if there were a nuclear war, and future generations had to piece together a history of the war in Iraq based solely on reporting from Al Jazeera.

"Surely an invented story would not have included the inconvenient fact that women (who were considered unreliable witnesses) first discovered the empty tomb?"

If they were considered so unreliable, why did so many early Christians believe the story?

Because, it's true. Many missionaries have noted that the concept of Christ/God dying makes it very hard to convert people. What kind of God, worthy of worship, can die? But it's the crux of the faith of 2 billion people.

Is this the "it has to be true, because it is so unbelieveable" line?