One of my New Year’s resolutions is to resume regular monthly posting as a blogger for the Times of Israel, which has become for me the “paper of record” in the Middle East. I read both the Jerusalem Post and HaAretz, but I have found that the Times is superior overall in providing a broad and balanced view of the complexity of news coverage in the region.
Below is the link tomy January post, and if you are of a mind to do so, please Follow, post on Social Media, and leave a comment.
I particularly welcome your comments at the Times of Israel web site—whether you share my views here or not. All you have to do to comment is register, no subscription cost required. The more feedback and traffic one gets the better, in terms of being featured in the paper in future blog posts. I have a slew of topics in mind over the coming months, so stay tuned.
I know some of you–perhaps many of you–have followed the work of Dr. Robert L. Kuhn on his TV and now Youtube programs “Closer to Truth.” If you have not visited the web site lately, it has been marvelously redesigned and Robert is ever at work with new horizons…see closertotruth.com. The program looks at the broad categories of Cosmos, Consciousness, and Meaning, drawing upon a wide range of scientific, historical, and philosphical approaches.
I received the following from Robert this week and pass it along with his permission:
In the paper, I seek an organizing framework for diverse theories of consciousness and to explore their impact on big questions. My central theses are twofold: (i) understanding consciousness at this point cannot be limited to selected ways of thinking or knowing, but should seek expansive yet rational diversity, and (ii) issues related to consciousness, such as AI consciousness, virtual immortality, meaning/purpose/value, life after death, free will, etc., cannot be understood except in the light of particular theories of consciousness. In addition, I want to present consciousness and its significance to broad scientific and scholarly communities.
The paper has good visibility in scientific circles. Any promotion in other communities via social media and/or personal networks welcome (but not expected).
I know Robert has worked on this harder than anything he has ever produced…and the results are remarkable. I may have mentioned here before that I have a whole series of interviews with Dr. Kuhn which you can find very conveniently collected here: https://closertotruth.com/contributor/james-tabor/
On an even more personal note, I had Robert as a guest in the LAST university class I taught, capping off my 45 year career, when I “retired” in July 2022. Here is a recording of that class for those interested:
Paul Tillich once said, I don’t pray, I meditate. I would head in that direction, but with this change: I neither pray, nor meditate, but I try to “atune,” through most of my waking moments, to the greater ordered PROCESS that has given rise to my very being. I am particularly fond of “naming” that personal conscious Process/Force as “HaShem,” the unnamed name who cannot be limited by any diminishing proper noun.
If I have to offer anything more specific, it might be something along the lines of “The Great Orchestrator…” Not of massive events, miracles, magic tricks, or anything noticeable or dramatically impressive, but somehow, the Force of all Forces, in which our very being is grounded, witnessed by the emergence of self-consciousness and the values of justice, truth, compassion, and kindness, and connecting the dots and circuits of our lives between the millions of humans who are somehow “tuned in” to have “ears to hear,” and a “heart to understand.” There is a cosmic clear channel always open. This unfolding must involve chance and necessity, circumstance, contingency, serendipity, congruence, and all obvious realities of tragedy, suffering, joy, and love. Who we connect with in our lives. What chance idea or inclination we seem to grab out of thin air, that ends up co-ordinating with something else, that in turn unfolds in this or that course or direction, too complex for even an imaginary future Quantum Computer to factor out…but nonetheless operating at all times end places in history. The goal is to promote the good, the beautiful, the creative, the just, and the compassionate–and the outcome, finally, is pure joy
Most forms of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam–not to mention more “eastern” modes of thinking, have gone down this path pretty much wholesale–that this earth is not our Home–a kind of alienation from the world. Salvation is beyond. I call this the “bad” idea that took over the world. I prefer Robert Frost’s line Birches: The earth’s the right place to be; I don’t know where its likely to go better…”
Please subscribe to my Youtube Channel if this looks interesting to you. I have uploaded nearly 200 videos since I began last year–with much more to come.
This video lecture that I did in 2015 covers some of the most basic presupposition of an upcoming series I am doing on Youtube on “Death, Afterlife, and the Future” in the ancient Western world. See what you think. I am convinced that the core idea has permeated every facet of our culture–religious as well as philosophical. It is like it is in our mother’s milk.
Thirty years ago…Some of my readers remember, others were not old enough, but heard from parents, and some not even born–like many of my students in their 20s. I asked an undergrad class of 70 last year–Who has heard of Waco, the Branch Davidians, or David Koresh? Five hands went up, but none knew much about it. The rest had no reference point with any of these three key terms.
My parents remembered FDR’s death, Pearl Harbor, and D-Day. I remember the assassinations of JFK, MLK, and Robert Kennedy, Viet Nam, and the 1960s. Waco was 1993. But even September 11, 2001 is becoming too long ago for our college age kids.
That I was even so closely involved in the Waco confrontation with the BATF/FBI is a story in itself. My field is ancient apocalyptic ideas, not new religious movements–but in this case the overlap and “fit” between understanding Waco and ancient constructs was rather tight. See my article, “Patterns of the End: Textual Weaving from Qumran to Waco,” which you can download and read free of charge.
So whether you remember April 19, 1993 or not, here it is In One Hour–the good, bad, and ugly of it all…This is one of the tightest summaries the whole Waco story that I have done over the years–from origins of the Branch Davidians in the 1930s to the disastrous end at Mt Carmel after the 51 Day siege in Waco, TX in 1993 (Feb 28-April 19).
In this short video I show that the whole idea of “Harmonizing” our four New Testament Gospels is a mistaken idea in the first place. In fact, Mark, the earliest Gospel written was viewed and strongly deficient by Matthew, who used 90% of it, as well as Luke who used 80%. But the question is–how did they “USE” Mark. I am convinced, and I give a few examples in this video and much more in the Mark course now available to the public, that they basically OVERWROTE Mark–much like one might do to alter a painting–and in the process essentially destroyed it as it came from its creator/author.
Dr. Robert L Kuhn’s newly designed Closer to Truth web site is truly stunningly done. Rich content, endless fascination…I know of nothing on the internet that compares. You can subscribe for free. Program content is also available on Youtube and via major Podcasts. If you are mainly interested in the “Big Questions” as I am, this is the BEST thing out there. Check it out.
Click on Image for 45s Introduction to the newly Designed Site
I am also very pleased to note my own contributor page has been wholly reorganized with videos I did not even remember I had done with Dr. Kuhn over the years, links to my books, and an updated Bio. Check it out here–a good place to start in diving into Closer to Truth!
Over the decades I have heard dozens of interviews with John Crossan, listened to his lectures, read his books, and spent time together in Jerusalem in 2007 with him and his wife Sarah, in endless conversation, visiting some of the “off the beaten tourist paths” places with Shimon Gibson. He and I have our differences on getting at the “historical Jesus,” but we agree on far more than we disagree, and I am happy to stand in his shadow and continue to listen and learn from him.
I just finished listening for the second time (!) to his recent two hour free-ranging interview with Youtube host Derek Lambert of Mythvision Podcast–which includes an hour of Q & A from viewers–really great questions. I have never heard him better–a wonderful combination of his personal experience, his latest insights on Jesus and early Christianity, but also deep dives into his broader theological, philosophical, and scientific outlook on our lives and history on planet earth at the wonderful age of 88, with his characteristic graciousness to all, sprinkled with his Irish wit and charm! Pure delight. Don’t miss it.
What really stood out for me, beyond the many excellent historical points about Jesus and earliest Christianity in its Roman contexts, were his existential perspectives about the process of “Evolution”–which I would equate to my own understanding of what has been called “Process Theism,” as per Whitehead and Hartshorne. Terms like God, Atheism, Theism, Theodicy, Eschatology–easily fail in common usage to reflect much precision of meaning, skewered as they are by . But all in all, Crossan’s vision of “Reality” as both transcendent and distributively “just”–in the way he lays things out, I find profoundly moving.
I usually try to chose categories for Blog posts from a topical “drop down” menu, but for this one I come up with a thick cluster: Death, Future, God, Historical Jesus, Horrors of History, La Condition Humanine, Philosophical Musings, Religion and History, the Bible, the Earth, Time…as I said, “wide-ranging”!
Here is the link–I hope you benefit from the accumulative scholarship and life wisdom of “Dom,” as I have:
When I speak of God, that word means to me the unseen force of all forces that drives this universe and cosmos of which we are cognizant and makes you and me the creatures we are with all the mystical existence we know and enjoy upon this earth.
Jack Pyle, Memoir to his Family
In Hebrew “God” is ‘EL which roughly translates as “Force” or “Power,” and the plural, with a singular verb ‘ELOHIM–could be understood as “that Force of all Forces,” akin then to ‘EL ‘ELYON–traditionally translated The Most High, but again, quite literally, “the highest Force.” All of this was well expressed by my friend Jack Pyle, former minister and author of a fine semi-autobiographical book, The End of All Things Is at Hand: A Personal Journey from Apocalyptic Fears to Historical Reality–about how biblical apocalypticism, both ancient and modern, is a flawed and failed enterprise. I highly recommend his book.
All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
T. E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom (original suppressed introductory chapter)