Review: D.M Murdock - Who Was Jesus Fingerprints of the Christ

I intend for this to be my final post on D.M. Murdock's books for at least a year to come. I like to end stuff on a positive note, so I decided to review Who Was Jesus - Fingerprints of the Christ, which departs from the other works of hers that I have looked into by virtue of being quite acceptable. 

I will still respond to criticism of my posts, if posted in the comment field of the blog - which Murdock's advocates have done very little of. I seriously welcome criticism, as that is how scholarly endeavours progress. 

1. Introduction

Who Was Jesus - Fingerprints of the Christ, published in 2007 by Stellar House Publishing, is more recent than either of The Christ Conspiracy and Suns of God. It is a great improvement on her previous books. A notable improvement is the scarcity of questionable sources. The amount of wildly speculative claims is reduced significantly and the linguistics is generally not bad (but there is not a lot of it), and the interpretation of biblical or patristic material seems more solid and less tendentious. Ultimately, the book offers little new compared to other works of counter-apologetics, and is more of a rehash of standard debunking of Christian claims than it is a thesis about the origins of Christianity. As such, it contains little new for the serious student of these topics.

Some problems did leap out at me, though. I figure I would be remiss not to point these out. Luckily, the problems are significantly fewer than in either of the previous books mentioned.

2. The Book

The book starts off with an overview of the narrative in the gospel of Matthew. On this follows a short chapter about Mark: she mainly points out differences between it and Matthew, and argues for Matthean priority. She argues somewhat unclearly here and I suspect this is so as not to be caught committing to the thesis that Matthew has priority. I have previously seen her advocates revert even fairly firm stances on the basis of technicalities of phrasing. A similar overview is offered for Luke, and finally a longer description of John.

The argument regarding Matthean priority is as follows:

In reality, there are a number of instances in Mark which indicate that in order to follow the tale the reader would need to have been familiar with details of the gospel story that are not presented in that text. For example, neither Mark nor John mention the virgin birth-- if Mark's gospel was the first, which means he may have thought it would stand alone, how could he leave out such a significant event? Another such instance. [...]

Indeed, it has even been suggested that Mark was written in response to criticisms of Matthew's gospel. One example used to craft the case that Mark was composed in order to answer commentary about Matthew occurs in the story of Jesus calling James and John from their boat, after which the two run off and leave their father alone. Perhaps this behavior caused Jesus to look like someone who led children away from their parents, directly contravening Jewish customs [...] [1, pp. 24-25]

The logical option that she omits mentioning is that it also is possible that some of these ideas - the virgin birth and other things - had not entered Christianity by the time or in the region where Mark was written, and thus were not included simply because they were not part of that author's belief system. On the other hand, you also have the possibility that in part, the gospel was not supposed to be read in isolation from a spoken tradition - c.f. how early rabbinic works can be well-nigh impossible to read without having access to an external tradition regarding their content. We too easily forget that writing is not the only way ideas get passed around.

Several times, Murdock seems to think that raising an objection and offering one possible solution is sufficient to show that the suggested alternative is the correct one - even when other possible solutions exist, and even when those are more parsimonious. This fallacy is known as false dichotomy.

However, the chapters on the gospels do serve their purpose well - they summarize the gospel contents, which probably are not entirely familiar to all readers, and point out certain problems with the manuscripts, such as certain known interpolations. Contradictions between the gospels also are pointed out.

A chapter on textual harmonization follows. The chapter is a bit unfocused, as it appears to deal both with attempts to evaluate the original among variant texts of individual gospels as well as reconcile contradictions between separate gospels. The main point of importance throughout the chapter is the sheer amount of variation in the available manuscripts, and the consequential lack of certainty regarding the contents of the originals. Considering the book is written mainly for Christians of various relatively conservative stripes, the inclusion of such a chapter is more than justified, as this probably will be entirely unknown to most readers. Again, though, in a sense it is more of the same as the previous chapters - inconsistencies, manuscript problems, etc. She justifiedly bashes - with some gusto - contortioned apologist explanations. Thoroughness is a virtue in this kind of literature, of course, but pretty much the same compendium of biblical problems can be found in earlier literature.

She spends quite an amount of ink on those who hold the KJV in special regard  - mentioning quite a number of the wildly crazy notions the KJV-only adherents blurt out. Mainly, her argument is aimed at genuine bible-believers of various kinds, and their arguments that indeed deserve debunking but also reveal the significant ignorance of these people.

There is a chapter on the dating of the gospels, with some good refutations of certain apologist claims. The dating seems to fall within the bounds of reason, although religiously conservative scholars probably would object to it. One piece of evidence that she does present is a quote mine, however:

Another similar anachronism in the gospels appears in the description of the "disciples of the Pharisees," as at Mark 2:18 and Luke 5:33. Since the Pharisees were technically not "priests" per se but pious, unlearned laymen, it would be unusual for them to have "disciples" in the clerical sense. 

This phrase may not have come into use until after the destruction of the temple in 70 AD/CE, which would mean that the writers were distanced from the events by a considerable amount of time.[1, p. 81]

The source given for this is Meier's  A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol 2. This is what Meier states:

As just noted, within the question voiced in v 18c, "the disciples of the Pharisees" is a curious phrase. It occurs in this precise form nowhere else in the NT. Since historically the Pharisees were for the most part a pious group of stringently observant Jewish laymen, most of whom were not learned teachers, one would not expect them as a group to have "disciples." The type of phrase one would expect is the one found in Mark 2:16: "the scribes of the Pharisees," i.e., those men within the Pharisaic movement who had formally studied the Torah, became teachers, and could thus act as guides for the other members of the movement. In v 18c, "the disciples of the Pharisees" must be taken in a somewhat looser sense to mean people who were attracted to and adopted the teachings and practices of the Pharisaic movement. This may be the meaning of the phrase when it occurs in Matt 22:15-16: "The Pharisees ... sent their disciples to him [i.e., Jesus]."

Such usage is not necessarily anachronistic or indicative of a poor knowledge of Judaism. Writing in the Jewish Antiquities (13.10.5 $288-89), Josephus refers to the Hasmonean ethnarch and high priest John Hyrcanus I (reigned 134-104 B.C.) as a disciple (mathẽtẽs) of the Pharisees before he switched his allegiance to the Sadducees. This probably does not mean that Hyrcanus, a worldly ruler involved in wars and international politics, carefully observed every detail of the Pharisaic way of life. Rather, the context suggests that he courted the support of the Pharisees, sought their advice and flattered them with protestations of how much he was influenced by them.

Another point should be kept in mind as well: both Matthew and Josephus use the designation "disciple(s) of the Pharisees" toward the end of the 1st century A.D., when the Pharisees (or the early rabbis in their wake) had gained the ascendancy as the leading group in post-A.D. 70 Judaism. Thus, while the phrase may not be dismissed simply as an anachronism, its use by Mark, Matthew and Josephus may have been fostered by developments after the First Jewish revolt.[2, p. 441-443, I have bolded some lines]

Murdock makes quite different implications than the source she is supporting her contention with.  Yes, I agree the gospels probably are written after 70CE. However, 'disciple' is not a word that proves this, nor is her representation of its significance in the context anything like what her source says.

As for the Gospel of Mark, Murdock makes the following statement:

... "Moreover, even though it also appears to have been built upon Matthew in order to answer questions raised by that gospel, the beginning of Mark seems to have been written to follow directly the last Old Testament book of Malachi, since, instead of the birth narrative, Mark begins his gospel with an account of John the Baptist, the "voice crying in the wilderness" and "the messenger" as prophesied "in the prophets," e.g., Malachi. [1, p. 25]

She seems to think the Old Testament was published in volumes with the same order of books as in modern Bibles already in the BCE years. This was not the case. A similar misconception is repeatedly cultivated in The Christ Conspiracy.

Melito's list - one of the earliest canons, has Daniel, Hezekiel and Esra after Malachi; the Canon of Trent includes Maccabees 1 and 2 after Malachi. The Augustinian canon has Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Tobit, Judith, Esther, 2 books of Esdras, 2 books of Maccabees following on Malachi.

Further, Jewish usage at the time was to have them in scrolls, rather than as single-volume books of modern type. Murdock seems to have been misled by the table of content in modern bibles into thinking that the idea people had of the biblical content was a linear narrative spanning from Genesis to Malachi, and that therefore, a "sequel" of sorts would try and maintain a thematic connection with the final chapter of the previous installment of the series. Clearly it would maintain a thematic connection with the entire thing, but trying to claim a "gotcha" regarding Mark-Malachi connections seems rather unwarranted - a "gotcha" that she has claimed in several books now.

She further makes the same mistake regarding Zacharia, regarding the cleansing of the temple:

On the contrary, when Old Testament scripture is studied, it becomes evident that this part about the temple being cleared of moneychangers is a reflection of the earlier scripture at Zecharia 14:21: "...And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day."  This book, Zecharia, is the penultimate before the New Testament, followed only by Malachi. It is evident that this pericope was included in the gospel story in order to make it seem that Jesus had "fulfilled prophecy," ...[1, pp. 164-165]

Following that, there is an overview of the other sources about Jesus from antiquity. Indeed, she provides reasons to reject most of these as worthwhile sources - and these reasons are all valid. Similar arguments have been voiced earlier, but a book such as this does require such an overview. A comparison of the Jesus narrative and the Elijah and Elisha narratives in 1 and 2 Kings is presented next. As far as I can tell, this list of parallels is due to Thomas Brodie, but I have been unable to obtain a copy of his book, and will edit this post once I have done so. Of these similarities, I only really would question one - viz. "Saves the lost sheep of Israel from foreign influences; is Israel's savior" [1, p 118]. Elisha indeed supposedly did that and the narrative bears out such a description (modulo "lost sheep"), but the Jesus narrative fails to have him save the Israelites from foreign influences - in fact, he seems rather to make them fall deeper into condemnation by foreign as well as their own influences.

As for whose saviour he is supposed to be - although the NT does assign that particular title to him - it seems the NT is more into foreign influences not being that terrible after all and him being a savior of the gentiles just as much or even more than of the Jews. The further use of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas to find similarities is a bit superfluous as sufficient evidence of early beliefs about an angry Jesus can be found in Mark. A similar list of parallels between Joseph (son of Jacob) and Jesus is also provided in the same chapter. The point is made that Jesus is an amalgamation of these characters, merged into one character by early Christians who had not witnessed any of the events described for the reason that none of these events took place.

After this, a sample of supposed prophecies Jesus fulfilled and discussion thereof ensues. However, even statements Jesus supposedly made that may have been based on OT texts are quoted as supposed prophecy fulfillment [1, pp. 126, 127, 128]. Some of the particular pericopes she mentions are similar to certain wildly common sayings of the talmudic rabbis as well, and this could suggest that they were just regular, common memes in the prevailing Jewish culture of the time, things preachers of different stripes did say.

On this, a series of questions regarding the gospels follow - the questions form an eclectic grouping, some being merely textual in nature, some regard the logic of the text, some regard the motivations leading up to certain textual changes. One inconsistency that she claims only is an inconsistency if extrabiblical assumptions are granted - viz. the trinity - [1, p.149]. Another supposed inconsistency is Jesus' apparent belief that Moses wrote the Torah - which Murdock interprets as evidence that the Jesus narrative was written by religious Jews wanting to manufacture a messiah [1, p. 161]. Jesus undeniably assumes Moses to be the author of the Pentateuch, e.g.

Mark 1:44: And saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.
Matthew 19:8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

Indeed, as Murdock quite correctly asserts, scholars have provided quite strong arguments that the Pentateuch cannot have been written by Moses. Hence, Jesus is quite clearly wrong on that count, and thus cannot be omniscient, and thus cannot be God (which, of course, I fully agree with). However, even then Murdock manages to botch the argument:

Yet, at Luke 5:46 Jesus is depicted as asserting as fact this untenable and evidently erroneous idea of Mosaic authorship - if Christ was truly the omniscient Lord, would he not know that Moses could not possibly have written the Pentateuch? Prior to the creation of Christianity only pious Jews would believe in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch. Could this entire story largely represent the product of pious Jews attempting to create a messiah?

First of all, and this is probably just a typo on her part, the verse she is referring to is John 5:46, as no Luke 5:46 exists, and the verse in John correlates fairly well with what she claims. However,  why would Pious Jews attempt to create a messiah that is so antithetical to their religion? John is, after all, the most explicitly antijudaic of the gospels. However, the main question should be: how can Jesus agreeing with the beliefs prevalent in his culture be a mark of his having been made up? This entirely evades logic.

Further, Murdock's knowledge of the linguistics of antiquity is weak:

Moreover, if Jesus is the omniscient Lord, who knows all languages perfectly, why would he speak Aramaic and not Greek- did Christ only come for the relatively small and isolated population of Aramaic-speaking Jews? [1, p. 180]

Greek indeed was the lingua franca of the eastern mediterranean, but Aramaic was far from spoken by a 'small and isolated population' nor was it spoken exclusively by Jewish people. True, its modern descendants have fewer than half a million native speakers, almost all of whom are bilingual in some major language - mostly Arabic - but Murdock still misrepresents the importance of Aramaic in the relevant time. The same mistaken claim is made in The Christ Conspiracy as well. Aramaic was widely spoken in one of the most densely populated regions of the world at that time.

This chapter changes focus to manuscripts at one point - and herein a significant portion of the criticism against the KJV-only movement resides as well. That criticism is mainly well presented, although it feels a bit out of place. Many of the arguments that represent the KJV-only movement seem to suggest that it would even be superfluous to strawman them: they are good enough at genuinely being worthless. However, this mixes several issues - the issue of the terribly bad manuscripts the KJV relied on, the general problem of manuscript reliability and evaluation, and finally, the genuine stupidity of the KJV-only mindset.

As for textual criticism, she seems simply to use a comparison of the RSV and KJV as a basis on which to say whether some verses are spurious. It would probably be better to use actual research on biblical manuscripts carried out by scholars! That way some kind of actual knowledge would be possible and not just pointless pontification on English translations.

The chapter entitled "Apology Accepted" is somewhat good, but a more nuanced view on metaphor contra literal is called for [1, p. 210] | The chapter History or Propaganda provides some occasional insight into potentially politically based changes in the text. However, some such arguments are very weak, and downright dumb:

Another glaring example [of politically-motivated interpolation] stands out at Mark 3:32, where the crowd is telling Jesus that his mother and brothers are outside. Some ancient authorities include "and your sisters" after "brothers." Which is it? It is a shock enough to discover that Jesus had brothers- as we have seen, a whole debate in itself - but sisters as well? Why would the Holy Spirit have some authorities reveal that Christ had sisters, while causing other authorities not to mention them? It would seem that the omission of the "sisters of the Lord" may exist specifically to emphasize a bias against women, a prejudice present in other parts of the bible as well and quite common throughout much of history [1, p 224]

So, by not having Jesus explicitly reject his sisters - which happens just a moment after the crowd informs him of his relatives' arrival - they were being biased against women? Best would be to provide an overview of the manuscript evidence - in which manuscripts do we find these sisters mentioned? How old are they compared to manuscripts that do not mention them? How numerous? Murdock's approach to evidence is still sub-par.

A weakness of her presentation of her argument is that she nearly never analyses the function of any pericopes - she does not attempt to parse their meaning, she latches on to isolated words, and thinks those are sufficient to establish parallels.

4. Conclusion

In closing, Who Was Jesus is a great improvement on The Christ Conspiracy and Suns of God. Indeed, had I not read them first, I would be under the impression that Murdock was a completely regular scholar - and this book ensures me she has it in her to be one. I would probably not even have spotted the lesser mistakes in a cursory reading, but having read her previous works my eyes have been quite opened to how easy it is for an author to sneak bad reasoning into a seemingly reasonable text. I am convinced a similarly close investigation of very many highly respected scholarly works would turn up a comparable number of problematic arguments and claims.

This book does not contribute a lot - you would find similar conclusions from Thomas Brodie among others. However, if you have no such book in your bookcase and feel the need for one, you could do worse than Who Was Jesus. If you are capable of tempering your reading with some skepticism, it does offer some value.

[1] D.M. Murdock, Who Was Jesus - Fingerprints of the Christ, 2007, Stellar House Publishing
[2] John P. Meier -  A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol 2., 1994, Doubleday

The Christ Conspiracy, Ch 19: Essenes, Zealots and Zadokites, pt 1

It is useful for the next several installments of the review of The Christ Conspiracy to consider the more general structure of the book. With the exception of a few chapters, most chapters fit into a rather simple partitioning into a few overarching themes or functions - which of those words to pick for describing it depends a bit on whether we look at the claims, which tend to be similar in each partition, or whether we look at the basic questions the chapters investigate. The first few chapters establish that early Christianity did have a significant amount of fabrication going on. The second part consists of several chapters trying to establish the meaning of the Christian mythos.

This chapter is the first in the final section of the book. These chapters attempt to identify the participants in the machinations behind Christianity, the deep roots of Christianity, or something along those lines, and in extension the deep roots of western culture. The questions these chapters try to answer are not very clearly stated, and the answers given seem to be a bit all over the place.

Chapter 19 presents an overview of the relationship of early Christianity to the Jewish movements of the time. The focus is mainly on the Essenes. The chapter's structure, as far as the Essenes go, roughly follows this outline: She states that some scholars have sought the origins of Christianity in Essenism, and in Jesus as a traveling Essene teacher of mysteries. She points out that lack of such evidence is pretty damning for the whole notion that Jesus was such a teacher. Christianity is stated to have spread too quickly for there to have been any truth to the origin story given in the NT - a rag-tag group of fishermen and other unassorted Jewish peasants could not have organized the early church in the short time span during which the church came about - thus scholars have seen the Essenes as a possible solution to that problem, what with the Essenes already having such an organization in place. She notes that this theory does not agree with fundamentalist Christian notions of Christian history.


The chapter starts out with a question, an answer to which is not really convincingly provided in the entire chapter:

The question remains as to how the Christian myths was created and by whom. In looking for the originators of Christianity, many people have pointed to the Essenes, the third Jewish sect besides the Pharisees and Sadducees in Jerusalem.[1, p. 296]

Murdock seems to be a bit inconsistent in whether she is arguing against Essenes-as-a-source-for-Christianity or Jesus-as-an-Essene.

 Like the mythicists' arguments, the Essene theory of Christian origins is repugnant to fundamentalists, because it posits the pre-existence of the Church, which would mean that Jesus was not its founder. The Church, according to such Christians, was not already established at the time of Christ's alleged advent but, under Christ's supernatural power and inspiration, miraculously caught ire and was empowered beyond all expectations, to spring out of nowhere into a full-fledged movement, with extraordinary influence and, apparently, a good deal of wealth. In swallowing this yarn, then, we are supposed to accept that, within a number of years of Jesus's purported death, a ragtag band of illiterate fishermen and semiliterate peasants questionable in their faith in Jesus was able to establish a full-blown church, with bishops, deacons, parishes and rituals. [1, p. 297]

Indeed, fundamentalist Christians believe things that clearly are mistaken. In other news, water is wet.

In spite of this fervent belief, there remains no evidence for such a  miraculous genesis, so scholars have been compelled to turn to the white-robed Essenes as the wellspring of Christianity. Within this theory, early Christianity was "pure" and "untainted" by corruption, which came only after it was institutionalized as the Catholic Church. [1, p. 297]

This is a very clear-cut case of strawmanning. Scholars who posit that Christianity grew out of Essenism do by and large not posit that early Christianity was "pure" and ""untainted" by corruption". Most such scholars nowadays generally admit quite clearly that religions and religious sects are human constructs, where all kinds of human behaviors exist. The Catholic Encyclopedia states that 19th century freemasons often sought an untainted Christianity in Essenism, but rebuttal of the problematic aspects of a 19th century hypothesis does not suffice to likewise reject a more modern view that has amended those very flaws. For examples of the kinds of views modern scholars have, Gabriele Boccaccini has several books and articles on the Essene-Christianity connection.

Thus this is a fairly terrible misrepresentation of the theory genuine scholars are working with. A scholar is supposed to keep up with what scholars are actually saying - not use strawman arguments. The alternative is that she is ignorant about what scholars actually are thinking. Both options are rather damning, and I do not see a third option. Certainly the kind of notion she decries - that early Christianity was 'pure' and unsullied - does exist, and is held by many protestants. Likewise, there are new religious movements on the fringes of Christianity that do think the Essenes were pure, and claim to be their spiritual descendants. However, these are not exactly scholars, and rejecting them - although relevant in a work for the deconversion of that kind of audience - is entirely irrelevant in a scholarly work.

She further dismisses the idea that Christianity has anything to do with Essenism by these statements:

In reality, the so-called pure Christianity would have been abhorrent to the followers of a simply morality such as the Essenes. For example, in addition to the squabbling, threats and apparent murders of converts such as in Acts, where Peter is virtually depicted as having caused the deaths of a husband and wife over money, this "pure" Christianity included the exhortation of slaves to remain slaves, such as at ... [1, p. ]

Not all religions live up to their reputations. Are we to expect the Essenes to be any better?

In order to compare Christianity and the Essenes, we need to have an idea regarding what beliefs and practices characterized Essenism - what distinguished it from the Pharisees and the Sadducees? What doctrines distinguish early Christianity from all three of them? Due to Murdock's rejection of the notion that the Dead Sea Scrolls contain any significant portion of Essene material, she has very few sources about their beliefs with which to work. Nevertheless, she does seem to think she knows a fair deal about their beliefs, as is evident from these statements:

The zealous Jesus's rash and brusk behavior is, in fact, contrary to the restraint and discipline of the peaceful Essenes. ... In addition, the Essenes were not followers of the Hebrew Bible, or its prophets, nor did they subscribe to the concept of the original fall that required a savior. They did not believe in physical resurrection or a carnalized messiah. ... [1, p. 299] 

Of course, the notion of the 'original fall' is understood very differently in Rabbinic Judaism than it is in Christianity, to the extent that it does not really have any clear connection to the savior whatsoever - the fall and the savior seem not to be connected together in a systematic way in Judaism. Thus, the lack of a fall does not have to indicate the lack of a messiah (and even vice versa). Further, we do not know that the Essenes rejected the Hebrew Bible, and some evidence seems to indicate they at the very least incorporated it in some way into their scripture.

Neither does Rabbinic Judaism subscribe to the kind of notion of a fall that Christianity does, yet Rabbinic Judaism too expects a savior. Since Murdock in addition rejects the idea that there is any substantial corpus of Essene material in the DSS, she is left with nearly no evidence as to what the exact beliefs of the Essenes were - yet dares to make sweeping statements about their beliefs! What this lack of any substantiation whatsoever outside of the reports of three ancient historians and the works of Philo should lead to is scholarly carefulness. Murdock instead takes this lack as license to speculate wildly. As for such wild speculation, the claim that the Essenes were not followers of the Hebrew Bible also seems somewhat suspect - or at least in need of some source backing it up.

There are indeed some reasonable points in this chapter - points she returns to in a much more focused way in Who was Jesus - Footprints of the Christ. The reasonable points are used, however, to reject points against which they are not sufficient or even helpful arguments. The argument is very unfocused - is she arguing against Christianity as an offshoot of Essenism? Is she arguing against Jesus as an Essene? Arguments that would support one of these is used to debunk the other and vice versa, and even then, those arguments are not particularly good. She seems to subscribe to a very idealized notion about the Essenes, and therefore has a hard time reconciling them with Christianity.

... The real Essenes, as described by Josephus, abhorred falsehood, and unlike the Christian fathers, would not have mindlessly believed the unbelievable. [1, p. 299]

Woah, wait, what? A religion in antiquity whose members would not have mindlessly believed the unbelievable? This sounds pretty credulous. It is clear the Essenes did in fact mindlessly believe the unbelievable, just like members of most religions ever.

 In reality, the so-called pure Christianity would have been abhorrent to the followers of a simply morality such as the Essenes. For example, in addition to the squabbling, threats and apparent murders of converts such as in Acts, where Peter is virtually depicted as having caused the deaths of a husband and wife over money, this "pure" Christianity included the exhortation of slaves to remain slaves, such as at ... 1 Timothy, Colossians 3, Titus 2

As for peacefulness, one of the ancient Essenes we know by name - John the Essene - was a general in the Jewish war[n]. I find it unlikely he was the only Essene to fight in that war.
Finally,

However, the Jewish aspects of the Christ character  are mainly Pharisaic, not Essenic.[1, p. 300]

Which particular aspects, pray tell, are those? Is it his wearing black rather than white? Without any explanation of this claim, we cannot evaluate it. Jesus deviates a lot from Pharisaism as well as Sadduceanism - belief in Satan as a fallen angel and various other aspects of his teachings seem to point to a non-Pharisaic ideological background.

In conclusion, the above quotes indicate that Murdock is even ready to interpolate a lot from the very little evidence we have (according to her) about Essene beliefs. The conclusion of the chapter does connect Christianity a bit more closely to Essenism, but along the way to that conclusion she goes through a lot of bullshit.

[1] D.M. Murdock, The Christ Conspiracy, 1999
[n] see http://lexundria.com/j_bj/2.556-2.584/wst, http://lexundria.com/j_bj/3.9-3.34/wst

A review of Strange Linguistics (Mark Newbrook)

A review of Strange Linguistics - a skeptical linguist looks at non-mainstream ideas about language. 

I have for a while tried writing a review of Strange Linguistics (Mark Newbrook with Jane Curtain and Alan Libert). As a relative newbie to writing reviews, this is somewhat of a challenge, especially as it is a somewhat difficult book to provide a summary of. It does not set out to prove or discuss any one specific hypothesis - it is rather an overview of a large number of pseudoscientific theories, complete with short explanations why these theories are pseudoscience in the first place. Thus, it is difficult to conclude whether it provides a sufficient argument in favor of some hypothesis - as no such intention is set out. This lack of focus does not detract from the work, but does make the life of the reviewer somewhat more difficult.

Newbrook et.al. do give the claims, in general, a fair hearing, and proceed to explain why these claims do not cut it. In the introductory chapter, he dutifully explains how some of these mistaken views probably are entirely harmless, but how others easily can be used to inflame ethnic conflict and just generally trick people - I especially find the claims made by the likes of David Oates to be likely to make people ruin other people's lives over badly justified claims:

Oates and his followers have applied the analysis of RS [reverse speech] in various practical domains, some of them involving matters of great sensitivity and potential harm. If RS is not genuine, this work is valueless at best and quite possibly extremely damaging. The areas in question include child psychology, alleged cases of child molestation, other alleged criminal offences (this includes the 'O.J Simpson' case) and the analysis and treatment of sexual and other personal problems more generally. [1, p. 168] 

As for the fairness Newbrook grants, it is well worth noting that he has led a research project into linguistic material provided by alleged alien abductees, with entirely inconclusive results, which he in some details elaborates on in the chapter on language from mysterious sources. (By 'inconclusive', take this to mean that Occam's razor justifies rejecting the claims of alien origin for these allegedly alien linguistic snippets, which indeed is the conclusion Newbrook draws from his research.)

For some claims the authors investigate, there could be some justification in providing a somewhat more detailed explanation as to why they are wrong. If it had overviews of topics such as the statistical likelihood of chance resemblances between languages, the comparative method, and some other relevant parts of linguistics, it could be very useful indeed.

It is definitely a good book if you already have some background in linguistics. It would also be a worthwhile addition to the library of any scholar or journalist who is not well-versed in linguistics but on occasion has to evaluate the value of claims that deal with linguistics - if they are willing to do some extra research on their own, alternatively, accept the claims of a bona fide linguist without looking closer at the evidence in his favor. As for journalists, I would even say the relevant chapters of this book should be relevant reading before writing any article on linguistic matters whatsoever. Alas, the lack of clearer elaboration on linguistic methodology might make it a bit too inconclusive to those unfamiliar with the field.

Linguists themselves probably can figure out the problems with various claims such as those presented in this book - and doing so could be a good exercise for a course in skepticism for undergraduate linguists (and even more so students of philology, whose understanding of linguistics sometimes may leave some room for improvement). Ultimately though, the book presents little new for the linguist - except maybe as a convenient source to refer to when there is no time to devote to the proper debunkage of some claim, or as an overview of exactly what kinds of weird beliefs about language are being peddled on the marketplace of ideas (which can be a bit of a shock even to seasoned skeptics).

If the book ever is translated, local crackpot linguistic theories should probably be given a more in-depth treatment: Swedish or Finnish translations probably should include more detailed investigations into both Ior Bock and Paula Wilson's claims (quite distinct types of claim, even if both are wildly wrong; Ior Bock's claims are described and rejected for the same reasons any number of other claims are, Paula Wilson is not mentioned at all which for a non-Scandinavian audience is an entirely justified omission), any Indian edition should probably debunk the various notions regarding Sanskrit that are popular there, Hungarian editions need to elaborate on why it is unlikely that Hungarian is related to the Turkic languages, etc. How such supplementary chapters would be written and incorporated into the book would probably be a challenge though.

There is a certain morbid humor to reading it, the endless amount of bullshit that humans have come up with is as fascinating as any good supernatural thriller. Newbrook in a way comes off as the straight man in a comedy, granting much leeway to the strange antics of a weird coterie of peculiar thinkers and crackpots. The amount of leeway he grants may seem excessive at times, but many of these weird theories are so wrong that even the loosest criteria are enough to debunk them.

There are two chapters whose inclusion at first may seem odd - one chapter on skepticism of mainstream linguistics, which does present some reasonable objections to Chomskyan (and related) linguistics, and another chapter on constructed languages. Some people that have constructed languages indeed base their hobby on pseudo-scientific notions of how language works - this is especially prevalent among those who wish their languages to have an actual population of speakers, oddly enough. However, the inclusion of languages that are framed as fiction or part of fictional worlds would be decidedly odd if it were not for the fact that non-practitioners of that particular hobby may misunderstand it. Here, the treatment could have made it clearer that hobbyists often do not see their hobby as any kind of scientific statement or claim, but rather as works of 'art' or similar. That chapter could have done with somewhat better research, but at the same time it might be the least important chapter, and therefore, not investing that much on getting a detailed picture of the constructed languages-scene is very justified.

The main drawback as far as I can tell is the lack of an index, making it difficult to find things quickly. An index would improve its usability especially for journalists, who often write with very strict deadlines looming. Some of the particular claims listed could fit in several different chapters according to the classification (and some are, indeed, mentioned in several places, often with a mention of where the main treatment of the claims occurs). I imagine a more lexicon-like layout could have fit, and would have provided an easy way of expanding the book in the future, but on the other hand that would separate the description of individual claims from the description of the main types of problems that mainly accompany specific kinds of claims.

In conclusion, it is a book that should probably be consulted by any number of people - especially non-linguists and journalists whose work at times intersect linguistics, but there is some room for improvement. On the other hand, it is possible an edition incorporating the improvements I would suggest would get unwieldy in size, and thus a complementary volume could maybe be justified. However, to some extent such a volume would be your basic introduction to linguistics anyway, the contents of (the relevant parts of) which should probably be learned by anyone before consulting this book anyway.

[1] Mark Newbrook with Jane Curtain and Alan Libert. Strange Linguistics - a skeptical linguist looks at non-mainstream ideas about language. Lincom Europa, 2013.