Monday night...
Oct. 28th, 2003 01:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept...and challenges might have been bad... hopefully I'm still in.
Went to an extra-credit lecture tonight about the last days of Jesus's life, and how sequences of events don't match between the Synoptic Gospels and John, and how the non-reactions to Jesus's doings and the insistence on crucifixion were oddities in the account. The scholarly portion of the lecture wasn't too bad. She did fairly well in providing data, justification, and references. However, the second part of the lecture was a disaster for the lecturer's credibility in my opinion. I will preface my assault by saying some of the matter may be attributable to fatigue, as her day today sounded like it was rather long... she did arrive late to her own lecture. However, I do not believe it exonerates her very much of what occurred.
Anyway, the second part of the lecture was about the Mel Gibson movie that's coming out depicting the last moments of Jesus. From the beginning of that section, the lecturer's prejudices and utter disgust were plain. It felt like an overreaction to a stupid statement that Mel had made about the accuracy of his movie. The Question and answer session was not too much better. The lecturer got confrontational to her questioners, sometimes interrupting, and other times asking questions back to the inquisitor that seemed designed to make them look poor. The last question killed her coming across as any sort of professional to me. The question was asked about her religious background, as a possible reference point to see where her views might have basis in. She refused to answer the question, and made remarks like, "I'm a historian. I look at history from a historical perspective. My religious background has nothing to do with this."
I believe that while the inquisitor may have been searching for something that she might be unconsciously favorable to, in terms of religion, the response makes me think that she may have something that she is consciously trying to fight against, an agenda of trying not to come to a particular conclusion. The question wasn't worded too well, and the speaker to me had tones of a fundamentalist about him by the way he asked the question. (He asked whether she had taken into account that Jesus, in the gospel accounts, fulfills certain prophecies made before him.) The question to me came off as sounding like a question of whether or not she believed in the gospel message or not, and she got rather huffy about that. She said something to the effect of: "I don't go looking for ways to make my research collaborate with Hebrew prophecies." Either way, I was not happy about that. I hid my disgust and conversed back on the scholarly side of things at the reception, where she handled herself quite well. (We never did find out what religious background she was from. Must have been too impertinent a question to be asked again.)
So the question I pose to you is: Am I just paranoid, or is there a good reason to be perturbed by her behavior?
Went to an extra-credit lecture tonight about the last days of Jesus's life, and how sequences of events don't match between the Synoptic Gospels and John, and how the non-reactions to Jesus's doings and the insistence on crucifixion were oddities in the account. The scholarly portion of the lecture wasn't too bad. She did fairly well in providing data, justification, and references. However, the second part of the lecture was a disaster for the lecturer's credibility in my opinion. I will preface my assault by saying some of the matter may be attributable to fatigue, as her day today sounded like it was rather long... she did arrive late to her own lecture. However, I do not believe it exonerates her very much of what occurred.
Anyway, the second part of the lecture was about the Mel Gibson movie that's coming out depicting the last moments of Jesus. From the beginning of that section, the lecturer's prejudices and utter disgust were plain. It felt like an overreaction to a stupid statement that Mel had made about the accuracy of his movie. The Question and answer session was not too much better. The lecturer got confrontational to her questioners, sometimes interrupting, and other times asking questions back to the inquisitor that seemed designed to make them look poor. The last question killed her coming across as any sort of professional to me. The question was asked about her religious background, as a possible reference point to see where her views might have basis in. She refused to answer the question, and made remarks like, "I'm a historian. I look at history from a historical perspective. My religious background has nothing to do with this."
I believe that while the inquisitor may have been searching for something that she might be unconsciously favorable to, in terms of religion, the response makes me think that she may have something that she is consciously trying to fight against, an agenda of trying not to come to a particular conclusion. The question wasn't worded too well, and the speaker to me had tones of a fundamentalist about him by the way he asked the question. (He asked whether she had taken into account that Jesus, in the gospel accounts, fulfills certain prophecies made before him.) The question to me came off as sounding like a question of whether or not she believed in the gospel message or not, and she got rather huffy about that. She said something to the effect of: "I don't go looking for ways to make my research collaborate with Hebrew prophecies." Either way, I was not happy about that. I hid my disgust and conversed back on the scholarly side of things at the reception, where she handled herself quite well. (We never did find out what religious background she was from. Must have been too impertinent a question to be asked again.)
So the question I pose to you is: Am I just paranoid, or is there a good reason to be perturbed by her behavior?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-10-28 08:50 am (UTC)1) If she is an historian, then it is critical to understand her bias. Therefore, her religious background is of key importance to any analysis of what she has to say. A true historian would know this. Perhaps she was trained at a school which still refuses to recognze the positive effects of the post-modernist movement revolutionizing the historical method?
2) Her beligerence to the questioners is unacceptable. She presented herself to them. Now it is her responsibility to either clarify information or defend rebuttals in a professional manner. This is true of any discipline.
3) Her response to the "Hebrew Scriptures" suggests that she is from the Catholic Church. Though there are also some few protestant denominations which have disregard for the Old Testament, it is certain sects of the Roman Church which look at the old testament with particular disdain (this stems from the anti-semitic behavior in their long European history). That, or she's not Christian at all and has racial prejudices to rival 19th Century Europeans...
I would be interested in studying this person's ideas. Is she published?
-=TK
Okay.
Date: 2003-10-28 12:49 pm (UTC)Yes, she's published. The lecture drew upon material from a recently published book of hers.
The name is Paula Fredricksen.
From the response, though, I think I didn't quite get it right when describing that final question. The inquisitor asked it in a manner that I got the implication that he was asking her whether or not she believed in the prophecies mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures that Mark and the other Gospel writers interpreted as referring to Jesus. Since she outright refused to answer any question about her religious background, (a major faux pas in my opinion, as I've mentioned) he asked her in a more subtle manner about it. I still cringed at the reply.
Hopefully that helped.
Re: Okay.
Date: 2005-04-24 12:58 pm (UTC)By the way, do you mind if I friend you?
~S
Re: Okay.
Date: 2005-04-24 01:39 pm (UTC)And no, I don't mind having more people to read.