Tag Archives: Religion

And the Trees Clap Their Hands: a book review

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And the Trees Clap Their Hands: Faith, Perception, and the New Physics by Virginia Stem Owens (1983, republished 2005, 148 pages)

I recently read And the Trees Clap Their Hands: Faith, Perception, and the New Physics by Virginia Stem Owens. This is a book that addresses the important question “What does it all mean?” with regards to science – what does science really tell us about the world, and how should we respond to that? How can we make sense of it all in a human way?

Virginia Stem Owens was born in 1941 and became a pastor’s wife in the Presbyterian Church (USA), also gaining an MA in English literature from the University of Kansas and a Master of Arts in Religion from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. She has written numerous books.

And the Trees Clap Their Hands was an enjoyable read, but Owens’ lack of scientific experience is responsible for several flaws in the book. I was a little disappointed at the lack of footnotes and at some glaring errors of fact. For example (p. 92), Owens confuses turbulence (a phenomenon of liquids and gases in the “Old Physics”) with Brownian motion (a microscopic phenomenon resulting from the existence of atoms). I also felt that she skipped over some important things, while not getting others quite right. I should point out, too, that the “New Physics” of the subtitle (relativity and quantum theory) is now roughly a century old. On the other hand, Owens’ writing is lyrically beautiful:

“The body I am today came yesterday in a crate of avocados from California. India spins in my tea-drenched blood this morning. Minerals dissolved for millennia in a subterranean aquifer irrigate my interior, passing through the portals of my cell walls, which are themselves filigrees of chemical construction. I am really only a river of dissolute stones, the wash of world-water dammed for a melting moment in the space I call my body, some of it ceaselessly brimming over the spillway and flowing on down drains, into other tributaries, catching in some other body’s pond, until one day the whole structure cracks and buckles, giving up in one great gush its reservoir of mineraled water.” (p. 126)


What does it all mean? Answers have come from Plato, Galileo, and the Bible, to mention just three sources (bust of Plato photographed by Marie-Lan Nguyen)

Relativity and Time

Since Owens mentions relativity several times, I was surprised to see no mention of spacetime. As Hermann Minkowski wrote in 1923, “The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will preserve an independent reality.”

Relativity implies that there is no absolute “present moment” in the Universe, and hence that, of the three theories of time illustrated below, only the Block Universe (Eternalism) can be correct. The philosophical and religious implications of this are huge, and would have been worth discussing.


Three views of time: in Presentism, only the Present exists; in the Growing Block Universe, the past exists as well; and in the Block Universe, also called Eternalism, the universe forms a four-dimensional spacetime “block” in which the future is already written (image © Anthony Dekker)

Quantum Theory and Observation

One of the key aspects of the century-old “New Physics” is that both matter and light exist as waves and particles. The true reality is a combination of two seemingly contradictory perspectives (this has been used by other writers as an analogy for the relationship between e.g. determinism and free will). The wave function of a particle changes over time according to the Schrödinger equation. It can also undergo wave function collapse, changing from something fuzzy and spread out to something far more definite. How and why the latter phenomenon occurs remains quite mysterious.

One of the classic experiments exploring this involves firing electrons at a detector screen through a double slit:


The double slit experiment (credit: NekoJaNekoJa and Johannes Kalliauer)

Being fuzzy waves, electrons go through both slits at the same time, undergoing interference effects characteristic of waves. They are then detected as particles, with comparatively precise locations:


Individual electrons being detected by a screen after passing through a double slit (credit: Thierry Dugnolle)

Physicists used the word “observation” for the electron being detected by the screen (thus having its wave function collapse). Owens takes it for granted that this means “observation by a human mind” and that the human race therefore, in a sense, creates the universe by observing it. However, this use of the word “observation” is not what most physicists mean (indeed, the universe fairly obviously existed before there were any people). It is, in fact, not clear exactly what constitutes a wave-function-collapsing “observation,” but recent work with quantum computing suggests that it happens even when nobody’s looking (and even when you don’t want it to).

Along the lines of Gary Zukav (whom she cites), Owens tries to build a semi-pantheistic philosophy on top of this – something that is not actually justified by the physics. She also makes a big thing of “the impossibility of isolating the observer from the world” (p. 85), which is not actually a huge problem in the physical sciences, if you know what you’re doing. It’s more of a problem with animal behaviour (as in the famous example below) and an enormous problem in psychology and anthropology.


Konrad Lorenz interacting with geese in the 1930s (Are you my mother?)

Religion and God

Owens is writing from an explicitly Christian (Presbyterian) perspective, which doesn’t quite sit comfortably with the New Age Zukavian material in this book (there also appears to be some influence from Owen Barfield’s Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry). And while Owens highlights the issue of nonlocality in quantum theory, she does not explore how this might relate to an omnipresent God “behind the scenes.” There are some beautifully written spiritual reflections, but the connection of the religious material to the scientific is somewhat tenuous. Owens seems to want “and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” to be more than a metaphor, but the physics doesn’t really help with that. In addition, there seems to be some theological confusion regarding the doctrine of the Incarnation.

Goodreads gives this book a score of 3.9. In spite of the beautiful writing and genuine sense of wonder, I can’t go nearly that high (side issue: Goodreads somehow has a cover image with the wrong title!).

* * and a half
And the Trees Clap Their Hands by Virginia Stem Owens: 2½ stars

Perelandra: a book review

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Perelandra (1943) by C. S. Lewis (1996 cover by Kinuko Y. Craft)

Having blogged about Out of the Silent Planet and That Hideous Strength, the first and last novels of the “Space Trilogy” or “Cosmic Trilogy” by C. S. Lewis, I should also mention Perelandra, the middle volume.

While Out of the Silent Planet is science fiction, Perelandra is better described as religious fantasy (with portions of what could be called supernatural horror). However, in a 1962 discussion with Kingsley Amis and Brian Aldiss, Lewis states that “The starting point of the second novel, Perelandra, was my mental picture of the floating islands. The whole of the rest of my labors in a sense consisted of building up a world in which floating islands could exist. And then, of course, the story about an averted fall developed. This is because, as you know, having got your people to this exciting country, something must happen.” When Aldiss responds “But I am surprised that you put it this way round. I would have thought that you constructed Perelandra for the didactic purpose,” Lewis replies “Yes, everyone thinks that. They are quite wrong.”

The basic idea of the floating islands of vegetation on the ocean of Perelandra (what we call Venus) may have came from the novel Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon (XII§4), after mankind has chosen to exterminate the native civilisation of Venus (something that Stapledon seems to approve of, but which Lewis explicitly criticised in Out of the Silent Planet): “Man now busied himself in preparing his new home. Many kinds of plant life, derived from the terrestrial stock, but bred for the Venerian environment, now began to swarm on the islands and in the sea. For so restricted was the land surface, that great areas of ocean had to be given over to specially designed marine plants, which now formed immense floating continents of vegetable matter.”

In Chapter 3 of Perelandra, when Elwin Ransom first arrives on Venus, there are some wonderful descriptive passages, which go far, far beyond Stapledon’s bald statement: “It seems that he must have remained lying on his face, doing nothing and thinking nothing for a very long time. When he next began to take any notice of his surroundings he was, at all events, well rested. His first discovery was that he lay on a dry surface, which on examination turned out to consist of something very like heather, except for the colour which was coppery. Burrowing idly with his fingers he found something friable like dry soil, but very little of it, for almost at once he came upon a base of tough interlocked fibres. Then he rolled round on his back, and in doing so discovered the extreme resilience of the surface on which he lay. It was something much more than the pliancy of the heather-like vegetation, and felt more as if the whole floating island beneath that vegetation were a kind of mattress. He turned and looked ‘inland’ – if that is the right word – and for one instant what he saw looked very like a country. He was looking up a long lonely valley with a copper-coloured floor bordered on each side by gentle slopes clothed in a kind of many-coloured forest. But even as he took this in, it became a long copper-coloured ridge with the forest sloping down on each side of it. Of course he ought to have been prepared for this, but he says that it gave him an almost sickening shock. The thing had looked, in that first glance, so like a real country that he had forgotten it was floating – an island if you like, with hills and valleys, but hills and valleys which changed places every minute so that only a cinematograph could make a contour map of it.”

It’s a great pity that Venus is nothing like that at all.


Lewis wrote Perelandra while a Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford.

Much of the rest of the book consists of conversations about theology and moral philosophy between Ransom, the scientist Weston (who first appeared in Out of the Silent Planet), and Tinidril, one of the two “people” on Venus. Tinidril corresponds to Eve in the Bible, so that we get a sort of alternate history of the “Temptation of Eve.” Weston is possessed by a “Force” that turns out to be Satan or a demon. As a former academic myself, it is interesting to see Lewis’s ascending hierarchy of potential moral failings:

“RANSOM: ‘Does that mean in plainer language that the things the Force wants you to do are what ordinary people call diabolical?’
WESTON: ‘My dear Ransom, I wish you would not keep relapsing on to the popular level. The two things are only moments in the single, unique reality. The world leaps forward through great men and greatness always transcends mere moralism. When the leap has been made our “diabolism” as you would call it becomes the morality of the next stage; but while we are making it, we are called criminals, heretics, blasphemers. …’
‘How far does it go? Would you still obey the Life-Force if you found it prompting you to murder me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Or to sell England to the Germans?’
‘Yes.’
‘Or to print lies as serious research in a scientific periodical?’
‘Yes.’
‘God help you!’ said Ransom.”

The chart below shows a chapter-by-chapter frequency analysis of various names and words in the book (some obvious synonyms were also used in counting words, and characters mentioned but not appearing are included). There is also a chapter-by-chapter polarity (sentiment) analysis at the bottom of the chart.

When one considers the theological subject matter, the conflict with the Un-man, and the underground scenes towards the end, the novel is a little reminiscent of Dante’s Inferno, but the final chapters are far more like the Paradiso, and (in a letter) Lewis himself tells us that some of the conversations between Ransom and Tinidril draw on Matilda in the Purgatorio. Aspects of the conflict between Ransom and Weston recall the interaction between Frodo and Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, while other aspects of Perelandra are like visiting the Elves. It is not a simple book.

Goodreads rates the novel as the best of Lewis’s trilogy, giving it 3.99 out of 5. I’m giving it five stars, but readers not interested in theology or moral philosophy would no doubt rate it lower.

5 stars
Perelandra by C. S. Lewis: 5 stars

Topic Analysis on the New Testament

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I have been experimenting recently with Latent Dirichlet allocation for automatic determination of topics in documents. This is a popular technique, although it works better for some kinds of document than for others. Above (click to zoom) is a topic matrix for the Greek New Testament (using the stemmed 1904 Nestle text, removing 47 common words before analysis, and specifying 14 as the number of topics in advance). The size of the coloured dots in the matrix shows the degree to which a given topic can be found in a given book. The topics (and the most important words associated with them) are:

A better set of topics can probably be obtained with a bit more experimentation. Alternatively, here (as a simpler form of analysis) are the relative frequencies of some Greek words or sets of words, scaled to the range 0 to 1 for each word set (with the bar chart showing the total number of words in each New Testament book). Not surprisingly, angels appear more frequently in Revelation than anywhere else, while love is particularly frequent in 1 John:

Seven varieties of metaphysics

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I was having a discussion with someone recently on metaphysics, so I thought I would blog about it. Here are seven varieties of metaphysics, describing three “layers” of reality (and yes, I am oversimplifying for brevity).

The first is Platonism. Plato believed that there was a hierarchy of Forms (Ideals), of which the highest was The One (Plato’s version of God). These Forms or Ideals were the true reality, and the physical objects we touched, saw, and tasted were only shadows of that true reality (that is the point of the allegory of the cave). The physical orange which we see and eat reflects Ideals such as “Fruit,” “Sphere,” and “Orange.” Neoplatonism continues and extends this point of view.

Saint Augustine and many later Christians held to a Christianised Platonism, in which the Ideals were thoughts in the mind of God (the Christian God, naturally). The physical objects we touched, saw, and tasted had a greater importance in Christian Platonism than they did for Plato – after all, when God created those objects, “God saw that it was good.” Much as with Platonism, the regularities that people see in the physical universe are explained by the fact that God created the universe in accordance with regularities in the Divine thoughts. However, Christian Platonism does not have the metaphysical hierarchy that Platonism or Neoplatonism have – in Christian Platonism, God makes direct contact with the physical universe.

Aristotle also reacted to Plato by increasing the importance of the bottom layer, and Aristotle’s thought was Christianised by Thomas Aquinas as Thomism. However, in Thomism the all-important bottom layer does very little except to exist, to have identity, and to have properties assigned to it. It is also not observable in any way. This can be seen in the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. According to the Tridentine Catechism of 1566, the bread and the wine of the Eucharist lose their bottom (“substance”) layer (“All the accidents of bread and wine we can see, but they inhere in no substance, and exist independently of any; for the substance of the bread and wine is so changed into the body and blood of our Lord that they altogether cease to be the substance of bread and wine”), while the bottom (“substance”) layer of the body and blood of Christ becomes metaphysically present instead.

Idealism denies that the physical universe exists at all. The followers of Mary Baker Eddy take this view, for example, as did George Berkeley. Only thought exists. To quote a famous movie line, “there is no spoon.” These thoughts may be independent of whatever God people believe in or, as in monistic Hinduism, they may be actually be the thoughts of God (in which case, only God exists).

The last three kinds of metaphysics deny the existence of any kind of God. In Platonist Materialism, this denial is combined with a Platonist approach to mathematics, about which I have written before. Mathematics exists independently of the physical universe, and controls the physical universe, in the sense that the physical universe follows mathematical laws. Roger Penrose is one of many scientists holding this view.

In what I am calling Extreme Materialism, the existence of an independent mathematical world is also denied, i.e. there is an empiricist approach to mathematics (mathematics simply describes observed regularities in nature). This view seems to be increasing in popularity among non-religious people, although it causes philosophical problems for mathematics.

Finally, the concept of the Mathematical Universe holds that the so-called “physical universe” is itself composed only of mathematical objects – only mathematics exists (which makes this, in fact, a kind of Idealism).

Eight Greek inscriptions

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I love ancient inscriptions. They provide a connection to people of the past, they provide an insight into how people thought, and they demonstrate how the experience of writing has changed over the past five thousand years or so. Here are eight Greek inscriptions and documents that interest me – some historical, some religious, and one mathematical.


Six of the eight inscriptions

1. The inscription that is no longer there, 480 BC

Our first inscription was inscribed at the site of the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC), where Leonidas and his 300 Spartans (plus several thousand allies) died trying to hold off a vastly superior Persian army. The inscription no longer exists (though there is a modern copy at the site), but the wording has been preserved by Herodotus (Histories 7.228.2):

Ω ΞΕΙΝ ΑΓΓΕΛΛΕΙΝ
ΛΑΚΕΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΟΙΣ ΟΤΙ ΤΗΔΕ
ΚΕΙΜΕΘΑ ΤΟΙΣ ΚΕΙΝΩΝ
ΡΗΜΑΣΙ ΠΕΙΘΟΜΕΝΟΙ.

Phonetically, that reads:

Ō ksein’, angellein
Lakedaimoniois hoti tēide
keimetha, tois keinōn
rhēmasi peithomenoi.

I’ve always thought that there was a degree of sarcasm in this laconic epigram – after all, the Spartans had declared war on the Persians (rather informally, by throwing the Persian ambassadors down a well), but then stayed home, leaving Leonidas and his personal honour guard (plus the allies) to do the actual fighting. My (rather free) personal translation would therefore be:

Go tell the Spartans,
Stranger passing by,
We listened to their words,
And here we lie.


The battle of Thermopylae, 480 BC (illustration: John Steeple Davis)

2. The Rosetta Stone, 196 BC

The rich history of the Rosetta Stone has always fascinated me (and I made a point of seeing the Stone when I visited the British Museum). The Stone records a decree of 196 BC from Ptolemy V, inscribed using three forms of writing – Egyptian hieroglyphs, Egyptian demotic script, and a Greek translation. The Stone was therefore a valuable input to the eventual decoding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Romance practically drips off the Stone.


The Rosetta Stone in the British Museum (photo: Hans Hillewaert)

3. The Theodotus inscription, before 70 AD

The Theodotus inscription in Jerusalem was located in a 1st century synagogue near the Temple (this dating is generally accepted). It reads as follows (with [square brackets] denoting missing letters):

ΘΕΟΔΟΤΟΣ ΟΥΕΤΤΕΝΟΥ ΙΕΡΕΥΣ ΚΑΙ
ΑΡΧΙΣΥΝΑΓΩΓΟΣ ΥΙΟΣ ΑΡΧΙΣΥΝ[ΑΓΩ]–
Γ[Ο]Υ ΥΙΟΝΟΣ ΑΡΧΙΣΥΝ[Α]ΓΩΓΟΥ ΩΚΟ-
ΔΟΜΗΣΕ ΤΗΝ ΣΥΝΑΓΩΓ[Η]Ν ΕΙΣ ΑΝ[ΑΓ]ΝΩ-
Σ[Ι]Ν ΝΟΜΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΕΙΣ [Δ]ΙΔΑΧΗΝ ΕΝΤΟΛΩΝ ΚΑΙ
ΤΟΝ ΞΕΝΩΝΑ ΚΑ[Ι ΤΑ] ΔΩΜΑΤΑ ΚΑΙ ΤΑ ΧΡΗ-
Σ[Τ]ΗΡΙΑ ΤΩΝ ΥΔΑΤΩΝ ΕΙΣ ΚΑΤΑΛΥΜΑ ΤΟΙ-
Σ [Χ]ΡΗZΟΥΣΙΝ ΑΠΟ ΤΗΣ ΞΕ[Ν]ΗΣ ΗΝ ΕΘΕΜΕ-
Λ[ΙΩ]ΣΑΝ ΟΙ ΠΑΤΕΡΕΣ [Α]ΥΤΟΥ ΚΑΙ ΟΙ ΠΡΕ-
Σ[Β]ΥΤΕΡΟΙ ΚΑΙ ΣΙΜΩΝ[Ι]ΔΗΣ.

In translation:

Theodotus, son of Vettenus [or, of the gens Vettia], priest and
archisynagogue [leader of the synagogue], son of an archisynagogue,
grandson of an archisynagogue, built
the synagogue for the reading of
the Law and for teaching the commandments;
also the hostel, and the rooms, and the water
fittings, for lodging
needy strangers. Its foundation was laid
by his fathers, and the
elders, and Simonides.

The inscription is interesting in a number of ways. Along with other similar inscriptions, it demonstrates the existence of Greek-language synagogues in 1st Palestine. The title ἀρχισυνάγωγος (archisynagōgos) also occurs in the New Testament (nine times, starting at Mark 5:22), so is clearly a title of the time-period. Some scholars have suggested that Theodotos was a freed slave, who had made his fortune and returned from Italy to the land of his fathers (in which case there is a very slight possibility that the synagogue with the inscription might have been the “synagogue of the Freedmen” mentioned in Acts 6:9).


The Theodotus inscription in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (photo: Oren Rozen)

4. The Delphi inscription, 52 AD


The Temple of Apollo at Delphi (photo: Luarvick)

The Delphi inscription is a letter of around 52 AD from the Roman emperor Claudius. It was inscribed on stone at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (above), although it now exists only as nine fragments. Of particular interest is this line (see also the photograph below):

[IOU]ΝΙΟΣ ΓΑΛΛΙΩΝ Ο Φ[ΙΛΟΣ] ΜΟΥ ΚΑ[Ι ΑΝΘΥ]ΠΑΤΟΣ …

Phonetically, that reads:

[Jou]nios Galliōn ‘o ph[ilos] mou ka[i anthu]patos …

This is a reference to Lucius Junius Gallio Annaeanus, who was briefly proconsul (anthupatos) of the Roman senatorial province of Achaea (southern Greece) at the time:

Junius Gallio, my friend and proconsul …

This same anthupatos Gallio appears in the New Testament (Acts 18:12–17: “Γαλλίωνος δὲ ἀνθυπάτου ὄντος τῆς Ἀχαΐας …”), and therefore provides a way of dating the events described there.


One of the fragments of the Delphi inscription, highlighting the name ΓΑΛΛΙΩΝ = Gallio (photo: Gérard)

5. Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 29, c. 100 AD

I have written before about Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 29. It contains the statement of Proposition 5 of Book 2 of Euclid’s Elements, with an accompanying diagram (plus just a few letters of the last line of the preceding proposition). In modern Greek capitals, it reads:

ΕΑΝ ΕΥΘΕΙΑ ΓΡΑΜΜΗ
ΤΜΗΘΗ ΕΙΣ ΙΣΑ ΚΑΙ ΑΝ-
ΙΣΑ ΤΟ ΥΠΟ ΤΩΝ ΑΝΙ-
ΣΩΝ ΤΗΣ ΟΛΗΣ ΤΜΗΜ[ΑΤ]ΩΝ ΠΕΡΙΕΧΟΜΕΝΟΝ
ΟΡΘΟΓΩΝΙΟΝ ΜΕΤΑ Τ[Ο]Υ ΑΠΟ ΤΗΣ ΜΕΤΟΞΥ
ΤΩΝ ΤΟΜΩΝ ΤΕΤ[ΡΑ]ΓΩΝΟΥ ΙΣΟΝ ΕΣΤΙΝ
ΤΩ ΑΠΟ ΤΗΣ ΗΜΙΣΕΙ-
ΑΣ ΤΕΤΡΑΓΩΝΟΥ

However, the actual document (image below) uses “Ϲ” for the modern “Σ,” and “ω” for the modern “Ω”:

ΕΑΝ ΕΥΘΕΙΑ ΓΡΑΜΜΗ
ΤΜΗΘΗ ΕΙϹ ΙϹΑ ΚΑΙ ΑΝ-
ΙϹΑ ΤΟ ΥΠΟ ΤωΝ ΑΝΙ-
ϹωΝ ΤΗϹ ΟΛΗϹ ΤΜΗΜ[ΑΤ]ωΝ ΠΕΡΙΕΧΟΜΕΝΟΝ
ΟΡΘΟΓωΝΙΟΝ ΜΕΤΑ Τ[Ο]Υ ΑΠΟ ΤΗϹ ΜΕΤΟΞΥ
ΤωΝ ΤΟΜωΝ ΤΕΤ[ΡΑ]ΓωΝΟΥ ΙϹΟΝ ΕϹΤΙΝ
Τω ΑΠΟ ΤΗϹ ΗΜΙϹΕΙ-
ΑϹ ΤΕΤΡΑΓωΝΟΥ

This manuscript is important because, being from 75–125 AD, it dates to only four centuries after the original was written in 300 BC – most manuscripts of Euclid are twelve centuries or more after (in fact, it pre-dates the alterations made to the work by Theon of Alexandria in the 4th century AD). The manuscript also contains one of the oldest extant Greek mathematical diagrams. The text is identical to the accepted Greek text, except for two spelling variations and one one grammatical error (τετραγώνου for τετραγώνῳ on the last line, perhaps as the result of the mental influence of the preceding word in the genitive):

ἐὰν εὐθεῖα γραμμὴ
τμηθῇ εἰς ἴσα καὶ ἄνισα,
τὸ ὑπὸ τῶν ἀνίσων τῆς ὅλης τμημάτων περιεχόμενον ὀρθογώνιον
μετὰ τοῦ ἀπὸ τῆς μεταξὺ τῶν τομῶν τετραγώνου
ἴσον ἐστὶ τῷ ἀπὸ τῆς ἡμισείας τετραγώνῳ.

It is really just a geometric way of expressing the equality (x + y)2 = x2 + 2xy + y2, but in English it reads as follows:

If a straight line
be cut into equal and unequal [segments] (x + y + x and y),
the rectangle contained by the unequal segments of the whole (i.e. (x + y + x)y = 2xy + y2)
together with the square on the straight line between the points of section (+ x2)
is equal to the square on the half (= (x + y)2).

The proof of the proposition is missing, however, and there are no labels on the diagram. I suspect that the manuscript was a teaching tool of some kind (either an aide-mémoire or an exam question). Alternatively, it may have been part of an illustrated index to the Elements.


Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 29 (photo: Bill Casselman)

6. Rylands Library Papyrus P52, c. 140 AD

Papyrus P52 is a small fragment written in a similar style to Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 29, but is dated a few decades later (to around 140 AD). In modern Greek capitals, it reads:

ΟΙ ΙΟΥΔΑΙ[ΟΙ]· ΗΜΕ[ΙΝ ΟΥΚ ΕΞΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΠΟΚΤΕΙΝΑΙ]
ΟΥΔΕΝΑ. ΙΝΑ Ο Λ[ΟΓΟΣ ΤΟΥ ΙΗΣΟΥ ΠΛΗΡΩΘΗ ΟΝ ΕΙ]–
ΠΕΝ ΣΗΜΑΙΝΩ[Ν ΠΟΙΩ ΘΑΝΑΤΩ ΗΜΕΛΛΕΝ ΑΠΟ]–
ΘΝΗΣΚΕΙΝ. ΙΣ[ΗΛΘΕΝ ΟΥΝ ΠΑΛΙΝ ΕΙΣ ΤΟ ΠΡΑΙΤΩ]–
ΡΙΟΝ Ο Π[ΙΛΑΤΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΕΦΩΝΗΣΕΝ ΤΟΝ ΙΗΣΟΥΝ]
ΚΑΙ ΕΙΠ[ΕΝ ΑΥΤΩ· ΣΥ ΕΙ O ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΤΩΝ ΙΟΥ]–
[Δ]ΑΙΩN;

The reverse side also has writing:

[ΒΑΣΙΛΕΥΣ ΕΙΜΙ. ΕΓΩ ΕΙΣ TO]ΥΤΟ Γ[Ε]ΓΕΝΝΗΜΑΙ
[ΚΑΙ (ΕΙΣ ΤΟΥΤΟ) ΕΛΗΛΥΘΑ ΕΙΣ ΤΟΝ ΚΟ]ΣΜΟΝ, ΙΝΑ ΜΑΡΤΥ-
[ΡΗΣΩ ΤΗ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ· ΠΑΣ Ο ΩΝ] ΕΚ ΤΗΣ ΑΛΗΘΕI-
[ΑΣ ΑΚΟΥΕΙ ΜΟΥ ΤΗΣ ΦΩΝΗΣ]. ΛΕΓΕΙ ΑΥΤΩ
[Ο ΠΙΛΑΤΟΣ· ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ; Κ]ΑΙ ΤΟΥΤΟ
[ΕΙΠΩΝ ΠΑΛΙΝ ΕΞΗΛΘΕΝ ΠΡΟΣ] ΤΟΥΣ Ι[ΟΥ]–
[ΔΑΙΟΥΣ ΚΑΙ ΛΕΓΕΙ ΑΥΤΟΙΣ· ΕΓΩ ΟΥΔ]ΕΜΙ[ΑΝ]
[ΕΥΡΙΣΚΩ ΕΝ ΑΥΤΩ ΑΙΤΙΑΝ].

Some clever detective work has identified the fragment as being from a manuscript of the New Testament gospel of John (John 18:31b–33 and 18:37b–38), permitting the reconstruction of the missing letters. The fragment is from the top inner corner of a book page (books with bound two-sided pages were a relatively new technology at the time, with many people still using scrolls). The fragment dates from less than a century after the gospel of John was written (and possibly just a few decades), thus helping in dating that work. There is no indication of any textual difference from later manuscripts – even the text on the missing parts of the front page seems of the right amount. The only exception is in the second line of the reverse side – there’s not quite enough room for the expected wording, and it seems likely that the duplicated words ΕΙΣ ΤΟΥΤΟ were not present.

In English, the passage reads:

… the Jews, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.” This was to fulfil the word that Jesus had spoken to show by what kind of death he was going to die. So Pilate entered the Praetorium again and called Jesus and said to him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” …
… I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world – to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Pilate said to him, “What is truth?” After he had said this, he went back outside to the Jews and told them, “I find no guilt in him.”


Papyrus P52 (front and back) in the John Rylands Library

7. The Akeptous inscription in the Megiddo church, c. 250 AD

The Akeptous inscription is one of a number of inscriptions found in the mosaic floor of a 3rd century church which was discovered in 2005 while digging inside the Megiddo Prison in Israel (the date is just slightly later than the Dura-Europos church in Syria). The Akeptous inscription reads:

ΠΡΟϹΗΝΙΚΕΝ
ΑΚΕΠΤΟΥϹ,
Η ΦΙΛΟΘΕΟϹ,
ΤΗΝ ΤΡΑΠΕ-
ZΑΝ {Θω} {ΙΥ} {Χω}
ΜΝΗΜΟϹΥΝΟΝ

Phonetically:

Prosēniken Akeptous, ‘ē philotheos, tēn trapezan Th(e)ō Ι(ēso)u Ch(rist)ō mnēmosunon.

In English translation:

A gift of Akeptous, she who loves God, this table is for God Jesus Christ, a memorial.

Brief as it is, the inscription has several interesting features. First, Jesus Christ is being explicitly referred to as God, which tells us something about Christian beliefs of the time. Second, the inscription uses nomina sacra – divine names (“God,” “Jesus,” and “Christ”) are abbreviated with first and last letter, plus an overbar (this is denoted by curly brackets in the Greek text above). Third, the inscription records the gift of a prominent (presumably wealthy) female church member (the feminine definite article shows that Akeptous was female). And fourth, the reference to the construction of a table suggests that there were architectural features in the church to support the celebration of Communion, which tells us something about liturgy.


The Akeptous inscription in the Megiddo church

8. The Codex Sinaiticus, c. 340 AD

Our final inscription is a portion of the Codex Sinaiticus, a 4thcentury manuscript of the Christian Bible, containing the earliest complete copy of the New Testament. This Bible is a century later than the Megiddo church, and two centuries after Papyrus P52. Unlike Papyrus P52, it is written on vellum made from animal skins, and is written in beautiful calligraphic script. I have selected the passage John 1:1–3a:

ΕΝ ΑΡΧΗ ΗΝ Ο ΛΟΓΟϹ,
ΚΑΙ Ο ΛΟΓΟϹ ΗΝ
ΠΡΟϹ ΤΟΝ {ΘΝ}, ΚΑΙ
{ΘϹ} ΗΝ Ο ΛΟΓΟϹ. ΟΥ-
ΤΟϹ ΗΝ ΕΝ ΑΡΧΗ
ΠΡΟϹ ΤΟΝ {ΘΝ}. ΠΑ[Ν]-
ΤΑ ΔΙ ΑΥΤΟΥ ΕΓΕΝΕ-
ΤΟ, ΚΑΙ ΧΩΡΙϹ ΑΥΤΟΥ
ΕΓΕΝΕΤΟ ΟΥΔΕΝ

In English:

In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things through him were made, and apart from him was not one thing made …

In the Greek, nomina sacra for “God” can be seen, together with a number of corrections (including, on the last line, an expansion of the contraction ΟΥΔΕΝ = “nothing” to ΟΥΔΕ ΕΝ = “not one thing”). Spaces between words had still not been invented, nor had punctuation or lowercase letters, which means that it is almost impossible to make sense of the text unless it is read aloud (or at least subvocalised). Fortunately, things have changed in the last seventeen centuries!


John 1:1–3a in the Codex Sinaiticus

True Stories – a book review

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True Stories: And Other Essays by Francis Spufford

I recently finished True Stories: And Other Essays by Francis Spufford – a collection of real gems by a man who can truly write. A selection of essays, book reviews, and other non-fiction works, this book is divided into the thematic sections “Cold,” “Red,” “Sacred,” “Technical,” and “Printed.” The section “Technical,” for example, includes a piece on British engineering, together with a wide-ranging essay on Babbage’s “Difference Engine No. 2,” reconstructed by the Science Museum, London. Babbage never completed this device, of course, and perhaps could not have done so, given the technological limitations of his time. This leads Spufford into a general reflection on counterfactual history, drawing also on the novel The Difference Engine.

The section “Cold” includes several pieces on polar exploration, such as an introduction written for The Worst Journey in the World (a memoir of the 1910–1913 British Antarctic Expedition), and a piece on Ernest Shackleton. I’ve been fascinated by polar exploration since childhood, so I found these particularly interesting.


Grotto in an iceberg, photographed during the 1910–1913 British Antarctic Expedition (image credit)

The section “Red” deals largely with the former Soviet Union. It includes an explanation of Spufford’s fictional documentary book Red Plenty, and the essay “The Soviet Moment,” which is still online at The Guardian: “It was not the revolutionary country people were thinking of, all red flags and fiery speechmaking, pictured through the iconography of Eisenstein movies; not the Stalinesque Soviet Union of mass mobilisation and mass terror and austere totalitarian fervour. This was, all of a sudden, a frowning but managerial kind of a place, a civil and technological kind of a place, all labs and skyscrapers, which was doing the same kind of things as the west but threatened – while the moment lasted – to be doing them better. American colleges worried that they weren’t turning out engineers in the USSR’s amazing numbers. Bouts of anguished soul-searching filled the op-ed pages of European and American newspapers, as columnists asked how a free society could hope to match the steely strategic determination of the prospering, successful Soviet Union. … The loudest and most important lesson of the Soviet experience should always be: don’t ever do this again. Children, don’t try this at home. … Yet we’d better remember to sympathise with the underlying vision that drove this disastrous history, because it is basically our own.”

The section “Sacred,” obviously, deals with religion (Spufford is an English Anglican). It includes a critique of Richard Dawkins, a reflection on C. S. Lewis, and a record of travels in Iran. The New Humanist still has online the essay beginning “Allow me to annoy you with the prospect of mutual respect between believers and atheists. … No? No. Because the idea of atheism as an extravagant faith-driven deviation from the null case goes against one of the most cherished elements in the self-image of polemical unbelief: that atheism is somehow scientific, that it is to be adopted as the counterpart in the realm of meaning to the caution and rigour of the scientific method.”


Spufford visited the Sheikh Lotfollah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran (image credit)

Finally, the section “Printed” includes miscellaneous introductions and book reviews, including an introduction to The Jungle Book, a review of the Mars trilogy, and an obituary of Iain M. Banks. This last section reflects Spufford’s wide-ranging interests in technology, exploration, and imagination. For me, at least, it established a connection of sorts with the author: we read the same things; we are brothers.


The last section of True Stories includes a review of the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson

See The New York Times and the New York Journal of Books for other reviews of True Stories. I’m giving it four stars overall, although several of the individual essays deserve five. This book was a delight to read.

* * * *
True Stories: And Other Essays by Francis Spufford: 4 stars

Belief in God in the US

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In another fascinating example of social statistics, Pew have just released a survey of US beliefs about God. The study included multiple questions about the nature and attributes of God, but my mosaic plot below only looks at the first one. The composition of each column is based on the recent survey, while the width of each column is based on religious composition data from a 2014 study by Pew.

In dark blue, 62% of the US believes in God “as described in the Bible.” A further 30% (in light blue) believes in some other god or higher power (or would not describe their belief in God in more detail). In red, 7% believe in no God at all, and in grey, 1% gave no response.

Columns correspond to denominations: Evangelical Protestant, Mainline Protestant, Historically Black Protestant (HBP), Catholic, Other Christian (OC), Jewish (J), Other Religion (Oth), “Nothing in Particular,” Agnostic (Ag), and Atheist (Ath). Numbers in the “OC” and “Oth” categories were not directly provided by Pew, and were estimated using totals provided (these two columns should therefore be taken with a grain of salt).

Among Christians, 92% of Historically Black Protestants and 91% of Evangelical Protestants believe in God “as described in the Bible,” but only 72% of Mainline Protestants and 69% of Catholics do. What’s more, 1% of Mainline Protestants, 2% of Catholics, and 10% of Jews say that they believe in no God at all (i.e. they adhere to their religion only culturally, and are actually atheists).

On the other hand, 90% of those who describe their religion as “nothing in particular” believe in some kind of God or higher power. So do 67% of agnostics and 18% of atheists (clearly, many who claim to be “nothing in particular” are in fact Christians of some form, and many who claim to be atheists are in fact not).

Part of the explanation for this presumably lies in the fact that religion is in flux for many people in the US. Christians switch between the four main groups, some Christians lose their faith, while other people gain faith in Christianity or in another religion. Religious reality is more complex than a handful of numbers might suggest.

Religious knowledge in the United States

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Part of the US religious landscape. Clockwise from top left: Evangelical Protestant, Mainline Protestant, Jewish, Catholic, Other Christian, Other

Readers of this blog know that I really love social statistics, and among the masters of that field are the people at Pew Forum. Back in 2010, they ran an interesting survey of religious knowledge. A simple 15-question version of the survey can be found online [if you want to try it, do so now, since this post has spoilers]. A total of 3,412 adults were interviewed (in English and Spanish). The focus of the survey was on the religious knowledge of different religious groups in the United States:

I was a little frustrated with the survey, since it mixed religion, history, and politics, with questions at quite different levels – ranging from “Where was Jesus born?” (multiple choice: Bethlehem, Jericho, Jerusalem, or Nazareth) to “What religion was Maimonides?” There was, however, an interesting subset of five easy questions about the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), which Christians and Jews have in common, and I decided to do my own analysis of these questions:

  1. What is the first book of the Bible? (Genesis/Bereishit)
  2. Which of the following is NOT one of the Ten Commandments? (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you)
  3. Which Bible figure is most closely associated with remaining obedient to God despite suffering? (Job)
  4. Which Bible figure is most closely associated with leading the exodus from Egypt? (Moses)
  5. Which Bible figure is most closely associated with willingness to sacrifice his son for God? (Abraham)

Since these questions are closely related and of similar difficulty, it makes sense to add them together. Notice also that Pew’s interviewers were instructed to accept both English and Hebrew answers to (a). The last four questions were multiple-choice, with “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not steal,” and “Keep the Sabbath holy” the other options for (b), and with Job, Elijah, Moses, and Abraham the options for (c) to (e). I would expect a bright child in Sunday School to get 5 out of 5 on these questions, and just guessing should average around 1 out of 5.


Which Bible figure is most closely associated with leading the exodus from Egypt?

Answers to these questions in fact depended quite substantially on education level, and this complicates analysis, because average education level in the US itself varies between religious groups. I coded education numerically as follows:

  • Level 0: No High School (grades 1 to 8)
  • Level 1: Partial High School (grades 9 to 11)
  • Level 2: High School graduate
  • Level 3: High School Plus: technical, trade, vocational, or college education after High School, but less than a 4-year college degree
  • Level 4: College (university) graduate with 4-year degree
  • Level 5: Post-graduate training

The chart below shows the 11 religious groups I looked at, and their average (mean) education level. Note that Jews are the best-educated (presumably for cultural reasons), followed by Atheists/Agnostics (possibly because many people in the US become Atheists/Agnostics while at university). The lowest average education levels were for Other Protestants (which includes Black Protestants) and for Hispanic Catholics. Each coloured bar has an “error range,” which is the 95% confidence interval (calculated using bootstrapping). Religious groups with overlapping error ranges can’t really be distinguished statistically:

I “chunked” these education levels into two groups: less-educated (0 to 2, everything up to a High School diploma) and more-educated (3 to 5, everything beyond a High School diploma, be it trade school or a PhD). The chart below shows the average number of correct answers for the five questions, by religious group / education group combination. Each religious group has two coloured bars, the first (marked with +) being for the more-educated subgroup, and the second for the less-educated subgroup:

The more-educated group gets more questions right (on average, 3.4 compared to 2.3), and within both education groups, there is a similar ordering of religious groups:

  • Mormons do best (4.5 or 3.4 questions right, depending on education subgroup).
  • White Evangelical Protestants come next (4.0 or 3.1). Both Mormons and Evangelicals put great weight on Bible study, so this makes sense.
  • Then comes a group of three with similar results: Jews, Other Protestants (including Black Protestants), and Atheists/Agnostics. Orthodox Jews put great weight on studying the Torah, but many Jews in the US are in fact fairly secular. More interesting is the high score for Atheists and Agnostics – they do seem to have some knowledge of the beliefs they are rejecting (Atheists and Agnostics also scored highest on the complete survey).
  • Then comes a group of five: Other Christians, Unknown/Other, White (non-Hispanic) Catholics, White Mainline Protestants, and Unaffiliated (“nothing in particular”). Notice that White Mainline Protestants (ABCUSA, UMC, ELCA, PCUSA, UCC, RCA, Episcopal, etc.) get about one question less right (3.1 or 2.1) than their Evangelical counterparts, reflecting less of an emphasis on the Bible in mainline denominations.
  • The lowest scores were for Hispanic Catholics (2.7 or 1.5 questions right, depending on education subgroup). Given that guessing gives an average score of 1, this suggests that many Hispanic Catholics in the US have a rather tenuous link to their faith (many of them appear to strengthen this connection by becoming Protestants).

Thus if the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) is a religious meeting place, it is a meeting place between Mormons, Evangelical Protestants, Jews, and (ironically) Atheists and Agnostics.

It is also interesting to see what happens when we add two simple questions about the New Testament – “Where was Jesus born?” and “Tell me the names of the first four books of the New Testament of the Bible, that is the Four Gospels?” Not surprisingly, Jews now do worse, since the New Testament applies specifically to Christianity. Atheists and Agnostics also do a little worse – apparently they know a little less about the New Testament than about the Old. In spite of the interviews being conducted in English and Spanish, Hispanic Catholics continued to do poorly, with less-educated Jews and Hispanic Catholics providing the wrong answer to “Where was Jesus born?” more than half the time.

Religion in the Australian Census

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Following up on my earlier post, here is a chart of religion in Australia, by age (as per the 2016 Census, with percentages on the vertical axis relating to the population of Australia as a whole, and excluding people with no religion specified). Coloured areas in this chart indicate the total number of people for each religious group:

The changing religious landscape is revealed by the variation with age. For people aged 65, the population is 25% Catholic, 24% secular, 22% Anglican, 16% other Christian, 7% Uniting Church, 2% Buddhist, 1% other religion, 1% Muslim, and 1% Hindu.

For people aged 25, it’s 47% secular, 21% Catholic, 11% other Christian, 8% Anglican, 4% Muslim, 3% Hindu, 3% Buddhist, 2% Uniting Church, and 2% other religion. The chart below shows these relative percentages, for each age cohort.

Immigration and children are keeping the Catholic Church stable in size, but the Uniting Church is in collapse, and the Anglican Church is not doing much better (other data suggests that it’s in collapse outside of Sydney). The “big three” non-Christian religions (Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism) are more than 10% of the age-25 demographic. The chart also shows the impact of student-driven Indian immigration to Australia over the past decade or so – there is a visible peak for Hinduism around age 33.

There seems to be something odd about the religion given for young children up to age 13 or so – some parents (especially Catholics) seem to be listing young children as “no religion.” This might reflect delayed baptism. However, it also seems that many children lose their childhood religion in late teens and early adulthood.

Mean ages for adults within the different groups are Hindu: 37.1, Muslim: 37.7, secular: 42, other religion: 42.6, Buddhist: 43.5, Catholic: 48.6, other Christian: 50.4, Anglican: 54.8, and Uniting Church: 55.8. The last two groups in particular are skewed towards older people.

Earthrise / Christmas

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Earthrise, taken aboard Apollo 8 by Bill Anders on 24 December 1968 (NASA photo).

With Christmas coming up, it seems appropriate to post this iconic photograph, taken by Lunar Module Pilot Bill Anders on 24 December 1968, while orbiting the moon in Apollo 8. The team also did a live television broadcast, in which Anders read from Genesis:

“For all the people on Earth the crew of Apollo 8 has a message we would like to send you: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.”

Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell continued: “And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.”

Commander Frank Borman closed: “And God said, Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you – all of you on the good Earth.”

And the same from me.