KirbyKhan posted:

Nix Panicus posted:

You do not want to provoke christian witches on christmas! They are at the height of their power, second only to necromancy spells cast at easter!

Weka posted:

Was Jesus a witch?

Regarde Aduck posted:

he created the physical realm and has 7 archon mini-bosses to help him out

the gently caress you gonna do against that?

Regarde Aduck posted:

wasn't prepared for this

War and Pieces posted:

no no the Archons are still there even if you believe in the good God we just call them planets

a helpful bear posted:

someone please trick me into believing in magic

I love any media, no matter how trashy (from supernatural to x files) on the occult

quote:

ABSTRACT

Even though the concept of “magic” has suffered severe criticism in academic discourse, the category continues to be used in many disciplines. During the last two decades, classicists in particular have engaged in a lively discussion over “magic” and have produced an impressive amount of written output. Given the impossibility of defining “magic” in a consistent and widely accepted manner, one cannot help but wonder what these scholars are actually talking about. Hence this paper purports (a) to critically review the recent debate on “magic” in Classical Studies, (b) to advocate for abandoning an abstract category of “magic” in favour of a proper analysis of ancient sources and (c) to historicize the term “magic” in Antiquity, that is, to muse on its ancient semantics, functions, and contexts. This methodological approach does not only overcome the major problems inherent in modern definitions of “magic,” but will also yield new insights into terminologies, modes of thought and speech strategies that underlie ancient religious discourses.

Ohtori Akio posted:

Magic has a meaningful definition as a more specific practice than religion.

quote:

As used by anthropologists, the term “witch” identifies someone alleged to practice socially prohibited forms of magic.

[...]

The foundational concept is magic, which encompasses beliefs and behaviors in which the relationship between an act and its effect rests on analogy or a mystical connection rather than empirical or scientific validation. While at its core magic is an idea or belief, it manifests in acts and rituals, texts and spells, and objects such as amulets and talismans. Anthropological theories of magic, including attempts to treat it as either separate from or inseparable from religion, date back to the discipline's mid-nineteenth-century origins and reached a zenith in the mid-twentieth century through fieldwork-based ethnographic research, especially connected to the structural–functional school of thought.

Ohtori Akio posted:

My understanding of the quote you pull is that witchcraft is socially prohibited magic, but for example prayer for the intercession of saints is normative.

I will click and read these..................perhaps.

quote:

However, in a number of recent works the shift towards deeper reflection on ancient terminology has led to the thesis of deviance. In Antiquity, some authors claim, "magic" functioned only as a polemical term to stigmatize and exclude others (named "the religion of the other, 22 "the dangerous other, 23 the "theological opposition"),24 or, in other words, to "squelch, avenge, or discredit undesirable behavior."25 Harold Remus, who investigated the 2nd and 3rd century controversy between Christian and Graeco-Roman authors on the miraculous abilities of Jesus of Nazareth and, among others, Apollonius of Tana, describes the conflict as a "competition in naming: affirming miracle of the extraordinary phenomena of one's own group and denying the name to those of rival groups."26 The ancient terminological dualism [...] can functionally be reduced, Remus claims, to the conceptual creation of discursive boundaries: between "us" and "them," between "inside" and "outside," and between "true" and "false."27 Charles R. Phillips III adds that these arbitrary and highly judgmental ancient demarcations of discursive boundaries ushered into academic discourse in the late 19th century and, thereby, decisively influenced the scholarly controversy on "magic" as a whole.28

In the ancient sources, there is no doubt a plethora of evidence for the thesis of deviance. The vast majority of the texts that came down to us and include the term mageía|magia or one of its cognates or synonyms refer to persons, texts, ritual practices or beliefs from an outward perspective and are usually accompanied by semantics of devaluation and stigmatization. However, the polemical instrumentalization of the ancient term "magic" is only part of the truth: in the Papyri Graecae Magicae the term appears ten times while clearly referring to the authors themselves and their own ritual practice.29 Here, [this] does not imply a stigmatization but rather a positive evaluation, notions of high religious expertise, of total effectiveness and legitimacy of the rituals at issue.30 Thus, a general postulation of the thesis of deviance seems misleading.

Weka posted:

what is the distinction here?

speng31b posted:

this is the multidenominational witchcraft thread

Endman posted:

it’s a shame they’re useless, because sigils look cool

http://jur.byu.edu/?p=6396 posted:

Augustine believed that words, as signs, were objects of the senses and merely a manifestation of something else. It is the reality that lies behind the sign, whether an object of the senses or the intellect, that is the actual object of true knowledge.

[...]

Augustine maintains that signs are “things,” meaning that their ontological value resides in their ability to cause one to think of something else beyond the impression they themselves make upon one’s mind.

Charlatan Eschaton posted:

sounds sorta like the mes, activities that are aspects of the gods also have representations as physical objects

Charlatan Eschaton posted:

sounds sorta like the mes, activities that are aspects of the gods also have representations as physical objects

Sherbert Hoover posted:

https://twitter.com/cynicalzoomer/status/1742367620924334185

Ghost Leviathan posted:

He does talk to god a lot

Reconstructing "Religion" from the Bottom Up posted:

Abstract

This article claims to uncover the core problematics that have made the debate on defining and conceptualizing "religion" so difficult and argues that this makes it possible to move beyond radical deconstruction towards reconstructing the concept for scholarly purposes. The argument has four main steps. Step 1 consists of establishing the nature of the entity "religion" as a reified imaginative formation. Step 2 consists of identifying the basic dilemma with which scholars have been struggling: the fact that, on the one hand, definitions and conceptualizations do not seem to work unless they stay sufficiently close to commonly held prototypes, while yet, on the other hand, those prototypes are grounded in monotheistic, more specifically Christian, even more specifically Protestant, theological biases about "true" religion. The first line of argument leads to crypto-theological definitions and conceptualizations, the second to a radical deconstruction of the very concept of "religion." Step 3 resolves the dilemma by identifying an unexamined assumption, or problematic "blind spot," that the two lines of argument have in common: they both think that "religion" stands against "the secular." However, the historical record shows that these two defined themselves not just against one another but, simultaneously, against a third domain (referred to by such terms as "magic" or "superstition"). The structure is therefore not dualistic but triadic. Step 4 consists of replacing common assumptions about how "religion" emerged in the early modern period by an interpretation that explains not just its emergence but its logical necessity, at that time, for dealing with the crisis of comparison caused by colonialist expansion. "Religion" emerged as the tertium comparationis — or, in technically more precise language, the "pre-comparative tertium" — that enabled comparison between familiar (monotheist, Christian, Protestant) forms of belief and modes of worship and unfamiliar ones (associated with "pagan" superstition or magic). If we restore the term to its original function, this allows us to reconstruct "religion" as a scholarly concept that not just avoids but prevents any slippage back to Christian theology or ethnocentric bias.

quote:

Step 3: The Blind Spot in the Debate

I will be arguing that this core of the problem lies in a serious and almost universal "blind spot" that invalidates the very foundations on which the current debate is built. Once we have located it and have learned to see what we have been overlooking, we should be able to redescribe "religion" in such a manner that its monotheist/Christian/Protestant connotations are avoided. As will be argued in the final section, we can do so by restoring it to its original and basic function, that of a tertium comparationis enabling historical and cross-cultural comparison.5

All participants in the debate seem to take for granted that the domain of "religion" stands against that of "the secular." For good reasons, those two are seen as inextricably bound together: neither "religion" nor "the secular" is capable of defining and maintaining its own identity otherwise than by means of contrast with it negative counterpart. This is why deconstructionists like to speak provocatively of a "simultaneous birth of religion and secularism" (Nongbri 2013: 4).

However, the basic assumption is incorrect. The historical record shows conclusively that "religion" was not defined against "the secular" alone, or the reverse. What actually happened during the early modern period is that "religion" and "the secular" were defining their identities on two fronts simultaneously: not just against each other, but also against a whole range of traditional non-secular beliefs and practices that were just as distasteful to Christian orthodox thinkers as they were to their secular critics. This third domain that they both rejected has been referred to by different names, but the most well-known are superstition and magic (Hanegraaff 2012, esp. 156-177). Contrary to the received wisdom taken for granted in current debates about the concept of "religion," then, we are not dealing with a simple opposition of religion versus the secular: instead, we are dealing with a triad. This means that those famous prototypes of "religion" that have claimed so much attention and caused so much trouble in the definition debate are not adequately described as stand-ins for "monotheism, more specifically Christianity, more specifically Protestantism." They stand for those three imagined minus their so-called "superstitious" or "magical" dimension.

This simple fact (for that is really what it is) should have far-reaching implications for the entire current debate on conceptualizing and defining "religion." How completely it has been overlooked by almost all participants in that debate can easily be checked by just going through the indices and tables of contents of their major publications, where relevant terms such as "magic," "paganism, "superstition," or "idolatry" turn out to be virtually absent. Again, this phenomenon can be explained by the remarkable power of reification as a semi-automatic mental process. As scholars, we know that defining "magic" is a topic every bit as complicated as that of defining "religion" — but we usually assume that it is a separate debate. Why do we make that assumption? Because, without ever realizing it, we have already reified "magic" as something different from "religion"! Hence, we find ourselves trapped in a vicious circle of our own making, attempting to define something that we have already defined in terms that distinguish it from something else (Hanegraaff 2012: 167-168). This circle exists nowhere but in our imagination. How did we get trapped in it? That question cannot be answered on the level of theory but only by revisiting the historical origins and development of the relevant terms.

Historicizing the Blind Spot

The terms "superstition" and "magic" both began their career as neutral or positive terms. Superstitio is Latin for the Greek deisidaimonia, in which deisi could mean "fear" but also "awe" or "respect," while daimones could be gods, goddesses, semi-divinities, or any other kind of superhuman being, regardless of their good or evil intentions (Hanegraaff 2012: 159; cf. Martin 2004).

Hence, we have, potentially at least, the complete spectrum ranging from what we might now perceive as a "superstitious" fear of demons to a "religious" respect for divinity or a "god-fearing" attitude: for instance, when the apostle Paul addressed the Athenians as deisidaimones (Acts 17.22), this was still meant as an expression of respect, not as an accusation. As for mageia, it derives from the Old Persian magu, which seems to have referred to a sacrificial priest or a similar functionary. Having been imported into Greek no later than the sixth century BCE, a positive understanding of mageia as "worship of the gods" (Plato Alcibiades 1.122A) survived at least as late as Apuleius in the second century CE and was revived during the Renaissance (De Jong 1997: 387-394; Otto 2011: 143-272).

Parallel to their positive or neutral usage, both terms acquired negative connotations as well. Since the fourth century BCE, the Greek philosophical elite began to use deisidaimonia as a term of disdain for popular and irrational beliefs about harmful deities, and for cultic practices that reflected a misguided fear of the gods. As for the Latin superstitio, it originally referred to practices such as soothsaying, divination, or prophecy, which were perfectly acceptable in the Roman Empire. However, from the first century CE on, the term became associated with the "depraved, strange, spooky and dishonorable" practices of foreign peoples such as the Egyptians, the Druids, or the Chaldaeans (Martin 2004: 132-133). In short, it was associated with threatening "others" whose presence might pose a danger to social and political stability. Something similar happened to mageia. Already by the fifth century BCE it began to acquire negative connotations reminiscent of the term goes, whence the term goeteia (De Jong 1997: 388; Otto 2011: 156). In the Roman Empire, the term magia came to refer to the suspicious rituals and practices of private practitioners unsanctioned by the state-sponsored cult.

For our concerns, it is essential to see that the conceptual boundaries between superstitio and religio (and their Greek equivalents, deisidaimonia and threskeia) were so fluid that the phenomena to which they were meant to refer simply cannot be kept apart except in terms of normative valuation. In other words, they referred to the same domain of beliefs and practices.

Religio meant an attitude of "scruple" or "reverence," based upon feelings of awe, anxiety, doubt, or fear "aroused in the mind by something that cannot be explained" (e.g., Casadio 2010: 305-308, with quotation from W. Warde Fowler). Likewise, deisidaimonia referred to attitudes of "awe" or "respect" towards the presence of gods; and as demonstrated by Dieter Harmening (1979: 16-17), its Latin equivalent superstitio was understood in a perfectly equivalent positive sense by authors such as Seneca, Junianus Justinus, Vergilius, or Cicero - not to mention the apostle Paul, as mentioned above.

After the triumph of Christianity in the fourth century, the two terms drifted apart according to a simple logic of normative disjunction: pious worship of the true Christian God versus idolatrous worship directed to the false gods of the pagans. In this process, superstitio and magia came to be imagined as broadly equivalent terms, with "idolatry" as their common denominator (Harmening 1979; Hanegraaff 2012: 169-177). The long and extremely involved history of these terms and concepts need not be summarized here even in its barest outlines (see references in Hanegraaff 2012: 158 n. 13, 169 n. 65): the essential point for us to notice is their enormous impact on scholarly theorizing about "religion." For this we need to move on to the birth of "comparative religion" in the colonialist era.

The Vanishing Trick: How "False Religion" Becomes "No Religion"

The strange practices and beliefs that Western explorers or missionaries encountered far from home could be interpreted by them in two different ways: either as a depraved travesty of what "true" religion was all about (because it fell short of Christian or monotheist models), or as wholly undeserving of the label "religion" (on the assumption that only true religion deserves that label). In other words, they could either be presented as marginal forms of "religion" proper or could be excluded from that category altogether.

This distinction is important but has not always been applied with sufficient clarity and precision. To demonstrate this point, I will discuss the example of David Chidester's critically acclaimed monograph Savage Systems (1996). One of its most central claims is that, according to the standard pattern of "frontier comparative religion" in situations of colonial conquest, indigenous people were originally perceived as having no religion. Chidester's thesis has been broadly accepted, but if we look closely at his evidence, we discover that "absence of religion" could mean two very different things. Sometimes it meant quite literally that "idols, temples, religious worship or ceremonies were unknown to [indigenous peoples], and they neither believed in the true and only God, nor adored false deities" (1996: 11); but in the overwhelming majority of cases, it meant that they had "no religion, 'only superstitions...'" (1996:12, cf. 15, 60, 65, 76-78, 85, 98, 178-180, 182, 234-235). Instead of being conflated, these two meanings should be sharply distinguished, for they make all the difference.

For instance, Chidester claims that in the eighteenth century, "fetishism emerged as a new term for the absence of religion... Without religion, Africans were unable to evaluate objects... This alleged inability to assess the value of material objects became the defining feature of African ignorance, childishness, capriciousness, and lack of any organized religion" (1996: 15). Note that several unexamined assumptions have now tacitly slipped in: apparently "no religion" means no organized religion, and the claim that fetishism is not religion means that it is not considered true religion. These are transparent examples of the monotheist, more specifically Christian, more specifically Protestant prototype at work: that of religion minus its so-called "superstitious," "magical," "pagan," or "idolatrous" dimension (not properly organized like a church, not "truly" religious). Chidester claims that colonial comparativism initially saw indigenous cultures as marked by an "absence of religion," but his evidence shows otherwise: they usually saw such cultures as marked by "superstitious" practices and beliefs such as magic or pagan idolatry. That colonialists did not emically see such practices and beliefs as "religion" does not mean that as scholars we should agree with them by tacitly adopting their prejudice in our etic language.

As the new model of "world religions" emerged during the nineteenth century (Masuzawa 2005), henceforth it comprised only those recently reified cultural complexes ("Hinduism, "Buddhism," "Taoism," etc.) that could be presented as sufficiently close to monotheistic models to escape the taint of association with the "third category" of magic, superstition, paganism, idolatry, and so on. As a result, that category was marginalized even more thoroughly and systematically than before: its relevance to "religion" could not be wholly ignored, but it could not be seriously included in that category, either. On a global scale, the vague and ill-defined domain of "everything other than the world religions" came to be associated with non-scriptural, indigenous, or tribal cultures; with dubious "folk" practices next to the supposedly more "sophisticated" practices of the cultural elites; or with "occult" or "esoteric" currents in the margins of dominant religions in Western culture.6

While the current debate on definition and conceptualization is based on the dualistic assumption that "religion" must be defined against "the secular," this dualism therefore masks a triadic structure. Because this fact goes unrecognized, what usually happens is that the third term is tacitly removed from the equation instead of being included under the umbrella of "religion." The deep irony is that by thus treating the third term as largely irrelevant to the concept of "religion," thereby rendering it invisible, even contemporary deconstructionists end up perpetuating the very same Christian-Protestant ideologies whose legacy they are trying so hard to deconstruct! If the triadic perspective continues to make intuitive sense to us even today, this is because our intellectual culture has inherited the profound disdain for "pagan/ idolatrous/magical/superstitious" beliefs and practices that has always been typical of orthodox (and most particularly Protestant) Christians. Secular thinkers who embrace the values of rationality and science have unwittingly adopted the same normativities from their Protestant forebears. In short, as I have argued elsewhere, both Christianity and secular modernity define their very identity against this "Other" (Hanegraaff 2012: 3, 369, 373-379).

This deeply normative and ideological separation of "magic" from "religion" cannot be maintained either empirically or historically (Styers 2004; Otto 2011). It is revealing that even the chief modern pioneer in this regard, E. B. Tylor, reached that same conclusion already during his lifetime: while his foundational classic Primitive Culture (1871) was built upon the "Magic — Religion — Science" triad and did much to popularize it, Tylor himself deconstructed it just twelve years later, in his entry on "Magic" for the ninth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1883) (Hanegraaff 1998: 262-265). But this shift escaped everybody's attention, and the combined cognitive forces of prototype thinking and reification proved much stronger than those of critical analysis and historical evidence. As a result, throughout the twentieth century and forward into the twenty-first, the triad has reigned supreme in scholarly as well as popular assumptions about both "religion" and "magic" and continues to do so up to the present (Otto 2011: 1-4; cf. Hanegraaff 2014: 114). Its effects reach much further than commonly realized. To give just one example, in his extremely influential standard translation of the Greek "magical" (1) papyri, Karl Preisendanz kept arbitrarily adding the prefix "Zauber-" and interpreting everything as "magical" by default: for instance, any reference to praxis and pragmateia (act, acting) was turned into a "magical act (Zauberhandlung)," botanai (plants) became "magical plants" charakteras (signs) became "magical signs," epaoidais (songs) became "magical songs," and onomai (names) became "magical names" (Otto 2011: 385). This is a particularly clear example of how the power of prototypes can trick scholars into actually creating "magic" (in order to keep it apart from "religion") while making them believe that they are discovering it in their materials. In this manner, scholars have been creating "magic" all over the world, excepting only those practices that were protected by the "world religions" label. By the same token, of course, they have been preserving, protecting, and reinforcing monotheist, more specifically Christian, more specifically Protestant prototypes of "religion."

A Tale of Three Brothers

Having identified the blind spot in current debates about conceptualizing and defining "religion," how can we proceed forward? Can we escape from the vicious circle of reification that has kept us trapped in monotheist, more specifically Christian, and even more specifically Protestant prototypes? Perhaps we cannot, but then again, perhaps we do not need to. Reification means that concepts that exist only in our imagination are misunderstood as somehow existing in the world "out there." In this sense, they are not real but imaginary, and the circle that keeps us trapped is ultimately no more than a mental illusion: there is nothing to escape from. However, the power of reification is very real indeed; as I argued above, it would be misguided to jump from the imaginary nature of "religion" to the conclusion that it does not exist. It is in this sense that the circle keeps us trapped.

As scholars, we may have to accept the fact that, for the foreseeable future at least, "religion" will keep playing an important role in the collective imagination on a worldwide scale, along with other reified concepts such as "magic," "superstition," "paganism," "the occult," and so on, all of them dependent on monotheist, more specifically Christian, more specifically Protestant prototypes. All this ideologically loaded language, no matter how ethnocentric or otherwise problematic it may be, just happens to be part of the emic discourse that we should study and try to understand.

Initially, one might want to agree with the deconstructionists that this deep ethnocentricity of the term "religion" renders it unsuitable as a general umbrella or second-order etic concept. However, I have argued that the historical analyses on which their argument depends are structurally incomplete. Ironically, in assuming that "religion" is the structural counterpart of "the secular," these analyses remain dependent on (and hence subservient to) the very same ideologies of exclusion that they intend to criticize. I began this section by quoting Nongbri's statement about the "simultaneous birth of religion and secularism" during the early modern period (2013: 4); but we have now seen that, contrary to common assumptions, those twins were not born alone — rather, we are dealing with triplets! To continue the metaphor, one might say that the two hostile brothers made a tacit pact. They would fight one another as worthy opponents but agreed to ignore their brother as if he had no right to exist. He was below their contempt and deserved no recognition as a legitimate member of the family. This strategy has been so singularly successful that even the most critical and perceptive of modern critics have been taken in: they have been concentrating on the tale of the twins and their lifelong battle ("religion versus the secular"), while ignoring their brother as an illegitimate bastard son at best. His existence could not be wholly ignored, but he should not appear on family pictures or expect to be invited to family parties. He became the invisible brother.

The direction of my argument should now be clear. As scholars, we cannot afford to remain complicit in the twins' normative strategy of rejecting their third brother and seeking to suppress his existence. He just happens to be part of the family and must receive equal treatment and recognition. How does this change the parameters of our problem?

Ohtori Akio posted:

nobody posts in my religion thread anymore so im evangelizing this one

blatman posted:

learning that necromancy is heresy, luckily i minored in chloromancy so i can at least grow huge weed plants

SpaceGoatFarts posted:

Wasn't that the OT though? Jesus was basically a necromancer, seer and wizard so I guess if he could do it, Christians can too.

blatman posted:

conjuration is fine because jesus conjured doordash for a hungry party

speng31b posted:

you try to equip a jesus spell you get pwned - just ask simon magus

quote:

Now when the apostles which were at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent unto them Peter and John: who, when they were come down, prayed for them, that they might receive the Holy Ghost: (for as yet he was fallen upon none of them: only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.) Then laid they their hands on them, and they received the Holy Ghost. And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, saying, "Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost."

mawarannahr posted:

it was only a sign to let people know what was up, there was no need... it also the puzzle piece

mawarannahr posted:

tristeham posted:

Charlatan Eschaton posted:

had to look up magu and check this out

lold at (in human years)

quote:

Though Korea considered her a creator deity, Chinese Taoists believed Magu had a mortal upbringing.

Colonel Cancer posted:

Im casting spells

Charlatan Eschaton posted:

~language is magic~

Charlatan Eschaton posted:

also to take it to egypt for a sec i liked hearing some pronunciations (one thing you miss out on in just reading words vs hearing stuff spoken) of thoth and realizing it's p much just a recreation of the sound that ibis make when they're talking to each other. learning from animal friends
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIWq_k2tiYg&t=306s
timestamp 5:06 esoterica

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJVWPG4FxNM

Charlatan Eschaton posted:

think so but i usually have to read things like three times to be able to recall anything specific so link it anyways thanks! im sure others will appreciate it too

unfortunately due to imprinting on a playstation game ~twenty years ago i default to thinking of a very goofy giant robot when i hear the word jehuty lol. probably gonna have to stick w thoth on that one. djehuty does seem like another sound a bird would say though like maybe a powerful owl

Thought, Utterance, Power posted:

Abstract

To the ancient mind, magic was a powerful force to be subjected to or to control. Egypt, more than any other early culture, stressed the importance of intellectual agency as the antidote to the imperfection perceived between foundational thinking and anti-foundational speaking. Just as rhetoric seeks to express the conceptual ideal pursued by philosophical inquiry, these earlier thinkers stressed magical language as the key to unlocking the power of the cosmos. This article will explore the Ancient Egyptian concept of rhetorical magic as a practical wisdom that allows an individual to function fully within the boundaries established by a perceived cosmic order. The Ancient Egyptians applied rhetorical magic to ease the dissonance felt between intellectual engagement and the semiotically saturated cosmology in which they dwelt. These same ancient rhetorical practices hold promise in assisting our own attempts to navigate a world inundated with information.

quote:

Going back as far as the Old Kingdom (2450-2300 BCE), ancient Egyptian speculative thinkers had already developed a complex understanding of the relationship between personal agency, power, and the role of magic. What is more, these early philosophers saw that this world (individual and social) and the other (cosmological) operated according to the same principles.
The rules by which one secured power were the same whether one was a peasant or a god. Through perception, the heart/mind would design an idea, the mouth would speak it and, as if by magic, the task would be accomplished. Thoughtful, reasoned speech was the mechanism for reestablishing the order that was manifested in the reasoned creation of the universe. Power and magic were not mysterious or esoteric to the Egyptians. Instead, power and magic were a part of an individual's very existence.

Ohtori Akio posted:

instead of a paper how about you read the gospel