The comparison with Jesus is empty (Amy Graves/WireImage)
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Was it rape? A powerful and charismatic man sees a beautiful woman bathing naked from his bedroom window and sends a couple of heavies to bring her up to his room. That night he has sex with her, and she becomes pregnant. Later, in an attempted cover-up, he would arrange the death of her husband.
So goes the biblical tale of King David and Bathsheba. In the stories that followed, Bathsheba was often depicted as a lascivious trollop who had offered herself to him on a plate. She was asking for it. Women — and not just women — were forever lusting after David. Even the Bible swoons over his good looks: “He was ruddy and had beautiful eyes and was handsome.”
A post-MeToo reading of David and Bathsheba would tell the story in a very different way. It would emphasise that he was a dominant man, a king no less, full of the “vertigo of success”, as one commentator put it, and she was a vulnerable woman, whose husband was away fighting at the front. Did she have a choice? Could she have said no to the King? We don’t know because the Bible doesn’t see fit to let us know her side of things.
This much we do know: when confronted by the prophet Nathan, David crumbles. He composes the 51st Psalm: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.” Is this self-pity or genuine contrition? It’s hard to tell. But David’s son Solomon had a harem of 700 wives and 300 concubines — so being sex-mad clearly ran in the family.
King David, this unprincipled lothario, was the original Messiah. He was the reason a heavily pregnant Mary travelled all those miles to Bethlehem: because that’s where David was born. It was all about the symbolism. Once in Royal David’s city, as we sing at Christmas. David was the once and future king, the high point of Israel’s political fortunes and the anticipated return of them. To speak of the Messiah is to make a political claim as much as a religious one. It is like wearing one of those Donald Trump hats with the words: “Make Israel Great Again.” Jesus will make Israel great again. Or Simon bar Kokhba will. Or Sabbatai Zevi. Or Rebbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. They were all considered by some to be the Messiah, the ones who would return the fortunes to Israel. David returned.
Can King David teach us anything about our disgraced messiahs today? Nearly 10 years ago, Russell Brand began his Messiah Complex tour. “He swaggers on stage with the fanfare of a rock legend, all tight jeans, ripped shirt and glossy hair, and descends into the audience to be groped and drooled over while dispensing grooming tips and gentle mockery,” wrote Stephanie Merritt in a Guardian review. This was the tour on which he fantasised about having sex with his cat, which he blamed for wandering around with its bottom exposed. This obnoxious priapic bully offered up his wisdom about Jesus and messiahs alongside “orgasm impressions and sly digs about marriage”.
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SubscribeHe’s not the messiah! He’s a very naughty boy!
Bah, you beat me to it!
No, he’s Girolamo Savonarola reincarnated, and about to suffer the same ‘fate’.
He should be the next Arch Bishop of Canterbury. Has to be an improvement on the current one.
What a splendid idea, well done Sir!
He’s not silly enough.
Beat me to it!
He’s not the messiah! He’s a slimy git who never lets anyone finish a sentence.
Meh. I’m not buying it at all. Brand dressed like a glam rock star from the ‘80s. And it finally dawned on me why. He was trying to cultivate a bad-boy image that so many women seem attracted to. Yet he’s not masculine enough to be truly frightening. This likely made him even more attractive – a safe bad boy. Sometimes these people are the most dangerous of all.
Having said all this, it’s important to remember he hasn’t even been charged with a crime. Maybe we should wait to sharpen the guillotine.
As i’ve commented before, it’s immaterial whether he’s committed a crime or not (though if he has, so much the worse.)
It’s about whether we, as a society, should fawn over him. Giles himself seems to have a bit of a complex about him, and the plethora of articles is way beyond what he’s worth.
I certainly don’t believe in ‘cancellation’ – but he can simply be ignored, as i’ve done prior to this outbreak of media frenzy.
Agreed.I don’t think he should be cancelled now – before he is even charged with a crime – and certainly not demonitized. I never paid attention then and I won’t in a week from now.
He can simply be ignored, but many millions of people choose not to. Whether you like him or not, it’s in that context that this whole issue needs to be considered and takes on some importance.
Yes, the squeaky little voice always gave the game away.
David Beckham has a squeaky voice. Do you condemn him too?
But intellectually speaking David Beckham does at least stay in his own lane.
What do you know about Brand’s intellect? Do you watch his podcasts?
Do you tie your own shoes?
He sounds like Frank Spencer from Some Mothers Do Ave Em.
Glam rock was the 1970s.
He’s being “Trumped” for having certain points of view. And lets face it the Brand coverage is certainly taking the eyeballs off the war….
Enough with the Brand trolling, Unherd! This has been relentless. This is sensationalist nonsense. A non-issue. Madness. Stop now, please! Hands up who votes for a Brand moratorium?
Aye!
I too am finding this pile in on the Brand of some years ago to be truly sickening. They call it Unherd but on this it is actually going along with the herd, hoever, many of those who comment here seem to be loving the pile in and so perhaps that is encouraging the editor.
I found the Brand that the media once promoted and fawned over repugnant but I believe in the human ability to transform, to be redeemed, to repent and to forgive. After all, isn’t that what Christianity offers? Of course, if charges are pressed and the matter is taken further then let him answer to them in court. I do not mindlessly defend the Brand that was.
No more should be said until that happens. Instead every article that attacks the Brand that the MSM itself encouraged and enabled, deftly shifts attention away from the work he has been doing over recent years.There is no regard for the huge co-incidence of all these disturbing claims being aired just as the so-called Online Harms Bills was passed. Brand had become a thorn in the side of corporate media and the establishment and clearly it was time for him to be taken down. The Dinenage letters tell us a lot.
Anyone who believes in free speech, independent journalism, different opinions and open debate should be extremely concerned regarding this bill that sailed through parliament and is currently awaiting Royal Decree.
I find it interesting because it reveals far more about those who are attacking him (their characters and motivations, their thought patterns, their attitudes) than it does about Russell Brand. It’s one of the reasons freed speech is so important: ‘give a man/ woman enough rope and he/ she will hang himself/ herself.’
I’m more astonished by what it reveals about some women.
i’m not. I have been exposed to too much of the dark side of human nature manifesting in both sexes. What I cannot stand is victim mentality, Those with victim mentality inevitably become the perpetrators of abuse because they are blind to their own bad behaviour and their victim mentality is expert at twisting any situation, however abusive they have been, into one in which they are the victim.
Not THAT fussy are they.
Best comment on the thread.
The media is anti-Christian, as is the liberal wing of the Church of England. Most likely they share the latent Gnosticism of the US Democratic Party.
Very well said! Great points. Although being cynically and suspiciously minded, I would not be surprised if Brand is in on his own crucifixion in order to serve the narrative…
As I’ve pointed out elsewhere in the comments – the ‘opinion’ presented on Scripture and those in it is utterly out of synch with what is actually found there. For instance, the repentance of David for his adultery and murder, Psalm 51, which displays a level of self-awareness that the author of this article could never manage:
To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
Have mercy upon me, O God,According to Your lovingkindness;According to the multitude of Your tender mercies,Blot out my transgressions.
Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,And cleanse me from my sin.
For I acknowledge my transgressions,And my sin is always before me.
Against You, You only, have I sinned,And done this evil in Your sight—That You may be found just when You speak,And blameless when You judge.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,And in sin my mother conceived me.
Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts,And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Make me hear joy and gladness,That the bones You have broken may rejoice.
Hide Your face from my sins,And blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from Your presence,And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.
Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,And sinners shall be converted to You.
Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,The God of my salvation,And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips,And my mouth shall show forth Your praise.
For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it;You do not delight in burnt offering.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,A broken and a contrite heart—These, O God, You will not despise.
Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion;Build the walls of Jerusalem.
Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness,With burnt offering and whole burnt offering;Then they shall offer bulls on Your altar.
Brand must be a chameleon. Stand him on a Bible and he becomes King David. Place him on a copy of The Guardian and he becomes establishment. Place him on another surface and he becomes anti-establishment.
Also enough of the bible trolling. The writer is clearly quite unaware of both the public statements from Brand acknowledging that he lived a promiscuous life and regrets it, and the biblical statement from David, Psalm 51:
To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.1Have mercy upon me, O God,According to Your lovingkindness;According to the multitude of Your tender mercies,Blot out my transgressions.2Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,And cleanse me from my sin.3For I acknowledge my transgressions,And my sin is always before me.4Against You, You only, have I sinned,And done this evil in Your sight—That You may be found just [a]when You speak,And blameless when You judge.5Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,And in sin my mother conceived me.6Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts,And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.7Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.8Make me hear joy and gladness,That the bones You have broken may rejoice.9Hide Your face from my sins,And blot out all my iniquities.10Create in me a clean heart, O God,And renew a steadfast spirit within me.11Do not cast me away from Your presence,And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.12Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.13Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,And sinners shall be converted to You.14Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,The God of my salvation,And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.15O Lord, open my lips,And my mouth shall show forth Your praise.16For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it;You do not delight in burnt offering.17The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,A broken and a contrite heart—These, O God, You will not despise.18Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion;Build the walls of Jerusalem.19Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness,With burnt offering and whole burnt offering;Then they shall offer bulls on Your altar.
So the potential for Russell Brand, as a typical human of contradictions and flaws, to be able to find redemption and turn over a new leaf is disconcerting to this man of god? God help us all indeed.
Giles, you are so confused, I feel sorry for you.
With Channel 4 and the BBC, the Murdoch media, if admittedly not so much The Times and the Sunday Times, created the unpleasant popular culture that defined and was defined by New Labour, and exalted as its personification Russell Brand. He was briefly both a presenter on the most popular radio station in Europe and a star of Hollywood films, living with Jemima Goldsmith in London and married to Katy Perry in Los Angeles. No one ever got that big either by accident or on his own.
I disliked Brand when that position was exceedingly unfashionable. Like Prince Harry, like at least one senior member of the present Cabinet, and like numerous members of recent ones including the Prime Minister before last, Brand has flagrantly lied on his United States visa application. Whatever his habits, his views on drugs have not changed. As to his more recently acquired opinions, I remain an unapologetically intolerant anti-anti-vaxxer, with a particular aversion to pro-drugs anti-vaxxers, for whose position I can scarcely find the words.
But no one said a word about Brand until he stepped out of line politically. More than a week after the hitjob, there has been no arrest, and the only Police investigation is into an unconnected allegation from 20 years ago. Those anonymised, voiced up women do not exist. Prove me wrong.
I agree with much of what you say but suggest you go deeper on the history of vaccination, Covid or otherwise. It is not a comfortable story.
Yeah Covid vaccines. It appears EU and WHO now advise against them unless over 65 and vulnerable. Meanwhile CDC is US are pushing it for everyone (including children) That level of disagreement means there is huge doubt over these vaccines. It ain’t going away either.
Meanwhile data clearly showing Sweden had least excess deaths in Europe from 2020-2022 (you can check if you dare: stats dot oecd dot org)
But hey keep the faith. US Big Pharma might even buy you a free vacation in Hawaii !
I’ve barely followed this story, mainly because I concluded many years ago that Russell Brand is a moron who does not deserve our attention.
Whatever their truth, accusations of sexual impropriety about him were a wearying inevitability. What is really amazing is how ostensibly educated and informed people fell over themselves to listen to what this Primark intellectual had to say and even encouraged him to say it.
They might as well have invited my university housemate Stuart on to Question Time. Stuart spent 3 years sat in an armchair getting high, occasionally issuing incoherent denunciations of whatever he thought fascism was (we never really got to the bottom of this), but was at least likeably hapless.
You seem to know a lot about what he is saying given you pay no attention? Brand currently has 6 million Youtube subscribers, much of that following is due to his quite good investigative reporting that he’s been doing over the last couple of years.
Well I would say his ace team of researchers under his direction. It takes skill to ferret out this “not exactly secret but might as well be” documents especially as you now have to “mine” cyber space. But good for them and him for doing it.
Best comment on here.
I would have thought it was a lot older. This type of image features in a lot of Victorian art, and goes back through to the Renaissance. In the first few hundred years after Christ, artists established the long-haired bearded figure as a sort of identifying feature. Garment fashions change, of course, but the centre-parted flowing hair and the (usually pointy) beard are very old conventions.
Agreed. Looks like Giles Fraser can’t even get Jesus right!
An interesting, original perspective. I didn’t think it was possible to come up with anything new on Brand but Fraser has done it. Well done!
Let’s hope this is end of this Brand saga and GO after the other one.
The one who thought it funny to joke about throwing battery acid over someone!*
(*Clue: She used to work for the sainted NHS unbelievably.)
Well,as I’ve found all my life,its one law for one,and one law for another.
“beautiful woman bathing naked”.
The word naked is unnecessary, would you not agree Mr John Solomon?
Sorry, Charles, I don’t agree. I am old enough to remember stories about convent girls (don’t ask!) who as late as the early 1960’s were made to take a bath wearing a shift so that the sight of their own nakedness would not be an ‘occasion of sin’.
How very interesting, thank you.
Maybe Bathsheba was a never-nude.
That sounds like a question for the ‘All Souls’ exam!
The Brand issue really had many takes and perspectives and is interesting on many levels:
demonetizing someone who is accused of crime but not yet found guiltygovernment nudging (OK, an MP) toward punishing financially someone who is accused but has not been found guiltysexual moresretrospective takes on sexual mores and this decade’s apparent fascination with judging the past by today’s standards#metoo and female sexual agency sexual revolution celebrities and their behaviorThe BBC and others and their employment of sex pests’everyone knew’ and the moral question of who should have said something the age of sexual consentindependent media vs traditional mediaconspiracy theories vs whistleblowingAnd so on.
That said, can we let this be for a bit?
I watch his video’s and I think, at his best he has good spiritual insight, and in recent years has shown that he has changed – remember, to date, these charges date back over 10 yrs. Having said that, if the allegations are true he needs to face the concequences. My hunch is that there is too much evidence for this to be a stitch-up. His denial may be good legal advice, but for someone on the 12 step program, not fearlessly telling the truth and owning up to ones transgressions is contradictory at best.
I think at least some of the “evidence” is so plainly true he “did it” but he has already told the world in print etc anyway. Maybe if gets a guilty verdict for just one case that proves incontrovertible he may have to go to jail,for a bit,I don’t know. But I’m finding from posts on Facebook etc that a lot of people now are unfamiliar with the concept of REDEMPTION. To be honest even I do a little sneer at yet another ex-football hooligan vicar. But we seem to have evolved into a vicious,vindictive and spiteful society that actively seeks to keep people entrapped in some imprisoning life they are trying to escape from or have,so we try to force them back.
I agree. Once someone has done their sentance then it is time to reintegrate into society. I like RB, I think on balance (i know not the criminal threshold) he is guilty, but I think too that if his voice is lost forever it would be a great shame.
Did this journalist ever actually watch Russell Brand on YouTube or rumble in the last 3 years. The guy was brilliant, funny, cutting, profound. Meanwhile the Mainstream media was drooling and muttering inanities about covid killing chilrdena and vaccines being 98 percent effective ( sorry 47 percent effective… for a few months…. maybe). Brand gave a brilliant analysis 5 days a week of the news, covid, Ukraine, Black Lives Matter, Boris Johnson, all of it.
Imperfect, yes. Horny, undoubtedly. But I say: Thank you and bless you RB.
Excellent analysis, Giles. Great phrase:
That seductive cocktail of religion and sex allows some people to have a powerful hold over another, easily abused.
Not just RB.
The reason why the women are choosing to remain anonymous for now because they don’t want to be persecuted and trolled by some of the millions of RB’s followers.
speaking out takes enormous courage.
There are plenty of abominable examples in recent religious abuse history. My favourite is the saintly Jean Vanier, the founder of L’Arche. When he took one of his lady acolytes in his arms, he explained that they were Jesus and Mary (er… Isn’t there something Oedipus going on here??). Now we have Father Alex Crow from Mobile Alabama who has run off to Italy with an 18 year old girl, apparently on instructions from Jesus….
“speaking out takes enormous courage”.
Really? That didn’t stop the likes of Émile Zola for example..
Emile did get pursued for libel and fled to the UK, but he wasn’t exposed to social media CS. But it will have taken considerable courage to say what he did in the anti-semitic French environment of that time. He also had a high profile, and higher still because of ‘J’accuse’ which in itself offered some protection.
The women speaking out about abuse will not have the same and will be subject to a blizzard of abuse. Arguably showing as much courage as Emile?
How to avoid online abuse: don’t read it, accept there will be differing responses. I realise some cannot. Stephen Fry likened negative responses to a t**d in the corner of the room (or something like that), impossible to ignore. In the 80’s, I had tickets to a play he was starring in. The play had received a negative review. Stephen Fry ran off and had a nervous breakdown so did not appear. It rather seemed as if the tickets had been sold under false pretences as the only reason many, many tickets had been bought was that Stephen Fry was the star. I am surprised he is not more resilient given he has spent time in prison. He is an atheist though and many Romans believed the Christian God to be a powerful god because the Christians who were fed to the lions in the amphitheater died so courageously, so fearlessly.
A blizzard of abuse, where? In some Youtube comments sections? The mainstream has automatically sided with these women in advance of even a criminal case, it hardly seems they’ll be emblazoned with lewd headlines on the front pages. If they are found not to have a case then I’m afraid they should face a blizzard of criticism, seeking to destroy a man’s reputation and potential imprisonment is no small matter. Considering the number of sexual abuse cases that are made and dropped and nobody being held accountable for the damage caused, the power looks to me to be on the other foot. I’ve never heard the cry “Believe all men”
Exactly.
According to ancient Jewish law, anyone convicted of perjury should receive the punishment that would have been meted out to the perjured if they had been found guilty.
Sadly not I’m afraid.
Anonymous accusations are poisonous, no ifs, no buts!
Only if you believe all women blindly, and do not believe in the central tenet of anglosphere jurisprudence that everybody is innocent until proven guilty. But the fact of the matter is that these allegations have all appeared at a time when Brand’s Rumble show was gaining traction and he was presenting evidence for views that the corporate press, elites and government found uncomfortable (e.g. the pharma-government industrial complex, the willful denial of anything untoward with the covid vaccines despite ample evidence to anybody who has eyes that they are accompanied by a high incidence of adverse events, the ra ra jingoism of many western governments an elites related to the current war in Ukraine, etc. etc. etc….).
But the women in a congregation can be predators too. Some men and some women are born with the gift of charisma. The word actually means “gift”. I want to leave women out here and just talk about men,as they tend to be more subject to this problem. And I’m speaking from my own perspective too. If you happen to go to a church,or a political meeting,or maybe even a stamp collectors club,and the man up on the podium is talking “your life”,” your feelings” you identify strongly. I know the feeling. Now maybe a woman in the congregation who is unhappily married,is dissatisfied or yes,the sad old spinster nobody talks to they start to emotionally focus on the preacher.
People with charisma tend to be attractive and have charm,it’s part of the package. And to be brief sometimes the preacher gets trapped.
His unhappily married parishioner visits him for spiritual advice,and because she is attractive and sexy…well there y’go…he does try….the old spinster gets a nice thank you for the cake she baked and a gorgeous smile!
The difference is that when the prophet confronted David, he realised his guilt and sought forgiveness.
Russell Brand did apologise to Andrew Sachs’ granddaughter and paid for her rehab. She seems to believe his repentance is genuine.
In my book, he is more like Saul undergoing a Damascene conversion to become Paul and preaching Christianity wherever he goes.
In fact, there was no-one standing against the neoconservative proxy war in the Ukraine, but Brand appeared on Bill Maher’s TV programme and now the US public is polling against this massive expenditure of life, resources and peace for the Ukrainian people.
C’mon UnHerd, it’s Dan Wootton Time!
He did offer to kiss Peter Hitchens.
Does that verge on the miraculous?
Another day another article on Russell Brand. Please give us a break – from him and from people posing alongside him ( whether pro or con). He should not be regarded as a celebrity at any level.
We shouldn’t be so interested but we are. I expect because Brand says more about us than we care to think. We don’t really know what happened or what is in his own mind. We can though wonder at how the culture has created someone whose life was hardly one of public virtue. We shouldn’t be surprised if the private virtue was also lacking. We had no issue about the crudity, the innuendos, the lifestyle. Now though, we are are very quick to judge, and to discard our own creation.
Russell Brands legacy: every masculine, attractive, intelligent, funny, well spoken, honest, discrete, considerate, mature, interesting, well-dressed, non self obsessed man in Britain who doesn’t treat the opposite sex like bits of meat is thinking: what possible chance with women do I have.
I thought Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem for the census.
That’s what the MSM would like you to think 🙂
They went to ask what the f*ck was meant by the question “Is your gender identity the same as your sex assigned at birth?”
Am/Godself
Whatever went on there was con-censual.
Sorry.
Well, let’s repair to the Bible. Who do we find there? Not just King David, apparently the man for all seasons of male domination. There’s Sarah, the ‘princess’.
In her book, The Lady of Shunem, Josephine Butler reserved some especial scorn for Sarah. This woman obviously wasn’t a feminist. Sarah conspires to get her girl slave pregnant by her husband in an act of adultery and subsequently changes her mind, evicting the girl and her new-born child into the wilderness, the uncultivated land.
The girl’s piteous cry that she cannot look upon her child as it dies does not melt the princess’s heart. True, Jehovah does speak to the girl but doesn’t restore her or her child to the status that was promised by Sarah.
Looking further into the Bible, one doesn’t have to cease being a Christian believer to note that Jesus told His followers not to go among the foreigners. Was He far right?
Even the most careful understanding of Jesus’s encounter with the Canaanite woman who petitions Him about her possessed daughter cannot disguise the fact that, while Jesus recognises an obligation to help this woman who is a non-elective member of a different community (as she would be described today), that help isn’t advanced on the grounds of equality. The obligation is expressed and justified in there being a connection between diner and dog in that they eat from the same loaf, but the dog is never invited to sit at the table.
Continuing to look into the Bible, we find the Pharisees. Contrary to popular misunderstanding, they were not ‘dodgy people’. They were the the best of the best; the missionary sect of ancient Judaism. Some of them, like other similar men of learning, experience and morally unimpeachable lives, were members of the leading council of the nation. Jesus acknowledged that one of them who seeks Him out is a ‘master of Israel’. Elsewhere, Jesus doesn’t deny their righteousness. When that council had to decide about Jesus, they were acting in their nation’s best interests. They were no more Quislings than the German politicians and parties who had to sign the Armistice in 1919.
Then finally, we come across the Apostle Paul. Accomplished salesman and revolutionary. A man who was fully aware of what his non-elective membership to a community meant and what it gave him. At the same time, a man who may well have also been a member of the Roman trade guild of the profession from which he had chosen to make his living; the same trade undertaken by the husband and wife he meets, perhaps at one of the trade’s meeting halls. One of the myriad free associations, comprising elective membership, that honeycombed the Roman world and whose organisation would be used to create the primitive churches.
Paul’s theology smashed communitarianism, as it would be called today. There was, he insisted, neither freeman nor slave. The basis of Roman society and economy was dissolved. There was, Paul insisted, neither Greek nor Jew. The ethnicity, the languages, the culture that defined such non-elective communities, preserved them, gave them legitimacy when adjacent to others, regulated their relations with others, was abolished.
Circumcision was nothing, Paul declared. A defining characteristic defined no more. It can be appreciated that this was felt to be an existential threat by Jews just as much as the same passages in Paul, that there was neither Greek nor Jew, came to be felt as an existential peril to the German national socialists’ concept of Germanness, a non-elective community, in the 20th century. A strange agreement.
As Saul, Paul had persecuted the followers of Jesus ‘in ignorance’. That is, he hadn’t violated his conscience in doing so.
The converts to the Way, Christianity as it would later be called, were ‘the elect’. They were elected by God. You didn’t choose me, Jesus tells His disciples, I chose you. You received an invitation, like the invitation to a wedding, when you were out and about in the hedgerows and byways, going about your business. RSVP.
Interesting to read. We get taught at school and it’s very much promulgated in church that The Pharisees were The Bad Guys when in fact they were the Greta Thunbergs of their day trying to get the populace to adhere to a so careful and regulated way of living that they would no longer offend God by the pollution of of their impious corruption. Re St Paul,I have a personal theory that he achieved his dream and got to Spain. I believe it is actually St Paul who was buried at what is s now called Santiago de Compostela. Over centuries people forgot the name but a folk memory lingered of someone very important so they picked Jesus brother for the name. I do hope my theory is true. I like to think of Paul,yet again “getting out of jail free” as he always did swing it. I’m not a Biblical scholar,as you’ve probably guessed but I have read that the Greek or whatever language word used for the community,the brothers and sisters you are enjoined to give to and share with doesn’t mean EVERYBODY it means like “your group” ,the paid up subscribers,which makes more.sense to me. Also I’ve read,only read,that when Jesus says a few times that you should “give all your money to the poor” the word or form of words used doesnt mean “give all your money to that guy in rags on the street corner even though you know he’ll spend it all on booze’ the word used means an institution like say The Salvation Army that sort of thing. A recognised outfit of people who ” help the poor” but in an organised and professional way. That too makes much more sense. Anyway you can’t help the poor. The ones who wont be always poor will help themselves,the others will stay where they are for all time.
Brilliant. My take on the non-sexual messianic complex of this guy is that all people like him imagine themselves infinitely bright, with insights no one else has. The brash side is not to my taste, but that’s just me. He’s clearly a very handsome guy with a lot of sexual power, and good luck to him there. The intellectual arrogance, however, lays claim to something anyone can see is not there. That’s hard-core being-a-right-royal-pain.
Speaking of dodgy doings, the present Pope seems to have protected serial sexual predators among other monsters in clerical robes. He claims he knows nothing about these flagrant transgressions, but these claims are gaining more and more skeptics.
Giles “can’t help but wonder if this is what messiahs are really like.” Brand is a typical false messiahs for our celebrity-obsessed age. Nietzsche would not be surprised at all at the prominence and popularity of the likes of Brand. If you are looking for a biblical character with whom to compare Brand, then Simon the Wizard, rather than David, is your man.