John the Baptist Lumberjack

I have been interested in Early Christianity for some time. Having been raised in the Christian tradition, and eventually coming to question it, I had some vague understanding of the process, more political than prophesied, by which the New Testament, and our current form of Christianity, came into being. It was always a topic of interest to me, as I found myself particularly annoyed and frustrated by those Christians who take the Bible as literal truth, without considering the long and convoluted process by which we have been granted access to the Book. I understood that translation was an issue, as well as the many times that the Bible had to be recopied by hand before it was collected and finalized. Both of these certainly led to errors, as well as omissions and additions by those very scribes doing the copying and translating, who were not likely without their own ideas and interpretations.

Until recently, though, my understanding of the topic came from what I had heard and the conclusions I had myself come to. I just picked up a book on the subject. Bart D. Ehrman's Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scriptures and the Faiths We Never Knew is an examination of some of the earliest forms of Christianity, occurring throughout the region in the years before the New Testament was collected and one form of the religion, the form we are all familiar with, won out over all the others.

The book so far is wonderful. Ehrman, a New Testament scholar and chairman of the Department of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill, uses myriad primary source material, translated by him from the original (ancient Greek, Coptic, Aramaic) to support his understandings of some of the earliest forms of Christianity. Only one of these groups (Ehrman refers to them as proto-Orthodox) comes out of the early centuries CE in one piece. The rest of them, and they are many and varied, were "lost," only to be rediscovered in previously unknown texts, found covered in dust in monastic libraries, or, more frequently, covered in sand in the deserts of the Middle East.

One chapter of the book is dedicated to a group of early Jewish-Christians known as the Ebionites. Ehrman makes the point of calling them Jewish-Christians, as these early followers of Jesus saw their budding religion not as something new, but as a simple extension of the Jewish faith. Jesus, of course was Jewish, and he Ebionites held that his appearance did not make null and void the teachings of the Old Testament, God's Law to his chosen people, which involved keeping the Sabbath, eating only certain things at certain times, and of course, circumcision.

You can imagine that these Ebionites may have had some trouble finding converts. How many, after all, are likely to choose a religion which not only institutes some pretty hefty rules and regulations, but also requires a painful and sensitive surgical procedure? Most of the Ebionites were likely already Jewish, and it is not surprising that this form of Christianity didn't catch on as the religion of the masses. As Ehrman puts it:

Had Ebionite Christianity "won" the internal battles for dominance, Christianity itself would probably have ended up as a footnote in the history of religion books used in university courses in the West. (p. 110)

This, however, is not the most interesting aspect of this ancient Christian sect, nor have I yet come to the reason for this post. You see, the Ebionites, according to Ehrman, seemed to have given up the sacrifice of animals, considering Jesus' death on the cross to have been the ultimate sacrifice and thus making any further sacrifice unnecessary. This also lead them to strict vegetarianism, considering any killing of animals as an unnecessary sacrifice. This also led to some interesting developments in their holy book, which Ehrman refers to as the Gospel of the Ebionites:

Probably the most interesting of the changes from the familiar New Testament accounts of Jesus comes in the Gospel of the Ebionites description of John the Baptist, who, evidently, like his successor Jesus, maintained a strictly vegetarian cuisine. In this Gospel, with the change of just one letter of the relevant Greek word, the diet of John the Baptist was said to have consisted not of locusts [meat!] and wild honey (cf. Mark 1:6) but of pancakes and wild honey. (pp. 102-103)

Pancakes! Ha!! I had always pictured John the Baptist as a grizzly, poorly-groomed bear of a man, coming out of the woods like a beast with visions and premonitions of some looming event. He had seemed to me like the first sidewalk caller, unwashed and unfed yelling out the prophetic words of God to anyone who would listen. But reading this put a whole new spin on this image.

I laughed out loud as I imagined John the Baptist coming out of the woods, famished, donning a soiled red flannel shirt, jeans, suspenders and boots, sitting down at the first table he could find to a steaming hot pile of flapjacks and honey as tall as they could be stacked. This seemed to me something that might turn up in a Cohen Brothers "loose adaptation" of the Gospel according to Mark. John the Baptist Lumberjack!

Further, somewhat cursory, research outside Ehrman leads me to the feeling that the Ebionite interpretation may in fact be more accurate. The word in question, which according to Ehrman needs but one letter changed, is the Greek word for locusts, akris. The Ebionites changed this word to egkris, or pancakes made of ground coriander seed. Paula Gott, an Essene Nazarene minister, sites earlier references to this same food, found in the Old Testament descriptions of the Jews' 40 years in the wilderness (Numbers 11:7-8, Exodus 16:31-32). It seems appropriate that in a New Testament Gospel like Matthew, which is decidedly pro-Jewish (Ehrman 98), parallels would be drawn between John the Baptist's wanderings in the wilderness and these earlier Jewish experiences there.

Whatever version is "correct," and Ehrman's book will lead many people to the conclusion that arguments over Biblical "correctness" may be moot, my own personal version of John the Baptist has been forever changed.

Thanks, Bart.

The Story Teller -- A Call to Action

In my previous post, I mentioned the proprietor of the Book Nook, who has held a dear place in my heart since high school, as both a Loud Talker, and a Story Teller.

During my research for that post, when looking for a suitable link to information about the Book Nook, I came across the following post in an online chat forum:

Barry

Marietta, GA · May 31, 2007

"Love books worked in retail books for last 20 years(was just recently fired as manager of Book Nook Marietta after 10 years).....anyway I'm mostly a non-fiction guy ,but I love fiction from John Steinbeck to Stan Lee."

Is this The Loud Talker of my youth?! Has the Story Teller been silenced? I never knew the name of The Story Teller, or if I did that has been lost. What has not been lost, what I will never lose, is the memory of The Book Nook, a memory that is inextricably linked to The Loud Talker's voice, continuously telling his stories to whomever would listen.

If this Barry is indeed The Story Teller, and it seems likely that it is (I recall that The Story Teller seemed to hold some position of authority. In my last post I called him "owner," but "manager" fits nearly as well), I feel that it is my responsibility to cast the light of inquisition on the circumstances surrounding his firing. What is The Book Nook without The Story Teller?

I am calling the readers of this blog to action regarding this horrible turn of events. This, as Barry says, is "an unexpected shock and trauma" for me and all those like me, whose memories of childhood book buying are crystallized in the image and sound of The Story Teller. Please post any pertinent information regarding Barry's firing. We will know the facts. We, like Barry, are "non-fiction guys".

Oh, Barry! You have fallen on hard times. Your stories stifled by the limitations of print and the character maximums of chat forum posting boxes. You are not forgotten, Storyteller! You talk more loudly than ever now, and what you say will resound in history!

Loud Talkers, Story Tellers, and Monster Molecules

I have fallen out of contact with too many people.

Those with whom I have maintained contact with are the most valued friends I have. I do not wonder that the value of friendship increases with time. This fact seems plain, and can be explained with simple logic: the longer you know someone, the more they know you. This is true even if, upon meeting a person, you tell them nothing about yourself before that moment. By virtue of spending regular time with the person, they know more everyday of who you "are". The argument could be made -- indeed likely has been made, and made sufficiently in my imagination for me to stand in agreement with it -- that it is impossible for someone to know anything about you before they day on which you meet. This given that any description of yourself prior to your meeting would be colored necessarily by who you "are" at that given time, and thus would not in fact be your "past," but your "current" version of that past.

I digress. I recently had a message from a friend of mine from high school. Indeed, we were best friends, and we have known each other since we were very small. Since high school, though, we have rarely talked.

His message regarded the "Monster Molecule," which, of course, is methane. He is in science now, and his masters studies bring him regularly in contact with this mother of all molecules.

Why we had termed methane the Monster Molecule escapes me, now. I do know that it was mostly nonsense, owed to our preoccupation with making Chemistry not only educational but also extremely funny and entertaining. (After learning about Johannes Brønsted's theory of acids and bases, I began writing my name with the "ø" in place of a traditional "o", figuring, simply, if Brønsted can do it, so can I. I wrote my name thus on the tops of my papers, inside chemistry and out, for the better part of the next two years. This is humor in AP Chemistry. Incidentally, my Chemistry teacher used the "ø" to sign my yearbook. She knew funny when she saw it.) We imagined methane, which has four strong covalent bonds, as some sort of molecular monster truck, coming into the chemical arena to crush all those lesser molecules in a fantastic spectacle. We even went so far, whenever mentioning the Monster Molecule, as to say it exclusively in our best "Monster Truck Rally Announcer" voice.

Gosh, those were the days, weren't they? The spirit of free creativity reigned supreme in all our endeavors.

I remember the Book Nook. This was (and still is) a used book store in the town where we grew up. Books, of course, having great importance to me, and to him as well, we spent time at the Book Nook. A bit of lore grew up between us regarding the owner of the Book Nook(or the manager, although in an establishment of this kind we assumed the two were one), who was an immense person. He was fat to the point of using a cane to get around. Not old, and not well kept, he wore t-shirts and sweat pants behind the counter where he totaled the books. He would buy back your books, if they weren't rubbish, for store credit, which you could use to buy other (though fewer) books. Whenever we would enter the store, the owner would be telling a story, thus The Story Teller, loudly enough so that everyone in the store could here him, thus the Loud Talker. He was invariably talking to someone in the store, telling them about a piece of gossip, a recent happening with regards to the business, the latest headlines, the plot of a book of interest. However, there was the sense as we perused the science fiction section, the history/cookbooks section, that he was telling us all a story. There was no music in the store, as one is used to hearing in bookstores -- classical or jazz or top 40, or jazz versions of top 40 -- just The Story Teller, The Loud Talker talking on and on, telling his story.

None of his stories do I remember. I don't remember if I cared what he was saying. Most of the time his stories had nothing to do with me. The Story Teller, though, lives on.

Once we went to the store. I think they were in the midst of relocating, to a new free-standing building down the street (which seems to me now to have formerly been some sort of restaurant). My friend and I came to look, and perhaps to buy a book. What we found were two shelves of discount books. Discount books in a used bookstore are sold at a very good price. Here we found a steal. "4 for 50¢ or 1bag for $5." We had $15 dollars between us, and left the store with upwards of 70 books.

This in itself sent us rolling. Why did we buy all these books? We hadn't even looked at the titles, but chose the ones which fit most snugly into the bags, thus more books for our buck. We left the store with only one possible reason in mind: we need to give these books away. And so we went to a Wal-Mart parking lot, emptied the bags of books into the trunk of his car, and began offering "free books" to anyone who happened by the car on their way to or from the store.

It was surprising how many people wouldn't take a book. Who doesn't want a free book?