ON THE MEANING OF
LIFE
ESSAY 1 : AN
EXAMINATION OF THE HOUSE OF GOD
At least two-thirds of our miseries spring
from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of
malice and stupidity: idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of
religious or political ideas. -
Aldous Huxley (1894 – 1963)
In the introduction I used
water divining and to illustrate the difference between the Truth and our
truths. But nowhere is this difference better illustrated than in religion. It
is my intention in this essay to examine religion, to sort through the “t”
truths and “T” Truths of the House of God in an effort to discover more about
the meaning and purpose of life.
Before inviting others to embark on a voyage through the often turbulent
and obscure waters of faith I think it is important to nail one’s colours to
the mast. The whiff vested interest – and of Huxley’s “proselytizing zeal” – will
always be present, and I think it is necessary to let everyone be clear from
the outset where you are coming from.
I had a conventional but low-key Christian upbringing at an Anglican
boys-school. Any orthodox Christian faith remaining from my school days was
demolished at
For those who need to label people my position is that I am left cold by
both theism and atheism. I find theism’ s god and its model for the meaning and
purpose of life primitive – and, at the same time, find atheism’s attempts to
explain all of human behaviour in terms of evolutionary ideology – incomplete. The
label agnostic does not fit because I have too strong a belief in the special
meaning and ultimate purpose of life. Deism appeals sometimes, and pantheism is
logical (in the beginning energy became matter, and that energy can only be “D”
Divine because it cannot be created, nor destroyed). I try to be Christian to
my fellows as often as I can. Maybe you could call me a Christian Pantheist? My
beliefs change – especially since I wandered into the philosophy of meaning –
let’s see how they stand after this examination?
AN EXAMINATION OF THE CHRISTIAN HOUSE OF GOD
This essay is an examination of the Christian House of God’s. I’m trawling
its truths for Truth. I am examining the Christian House of God because it is
the one with which I am most familiar, but much of what is discussed here will
be applicable to all Houses of God – especially those founded on a “B” Book,
supposedly written by God.
ISN’T IT PRESUMPTUOUS TO CRITICALLY EXAMINE GOD?
I would answer that by asking, isn’t it presumptuous to equate God with
religion? This essay critically examines religion, not God, and asks: did God
provide the design for the House of God, and does God dwell within? Many people
confuse God and religion, but religion is in many ways the worst thing that
ever happened to God.
WHAT ABOUT JESUS?
I will consider the “T” Truths of Jesus at length in this essay. I will
attempt to find what he really said – his real message – and who really killed him,
then his message.
WHY EXAMINE THE HOUSE OF GOD IF IT DOES GOOD?
Over the centuries the House of God has offered fellowship to its
members, charity to the needy, hospitals to the sick, aid to poor countries, a
community hub, ceremonies to mark our rites of passage, and a refuge for some in
times of personal crisis in the arms of a protecting father-god. It has also
set standards of moral behaviour valuable to society.
THE HOUSE OF GOD IS FAILING
IN ITS USEFUL ROLES
I presume to examine the
House of God because it is failing in these useful roles. Membership is
crashing – figures from the 2004 National Church Life Survey show that Roman
Catholics are down 13%; Anglican down 2%; Uniting down 13%; Lutheran down 8%. Importantly,
very few within the percentages identifying themselves as Christian actually
attend church on any significant basis – a study by Monash University,
Australian Catholic University and the Christian Research Association in 2006 found
that just 19% of Generation Y who identify themselves as Christian (48%) were
actively involved in a church, attending services at least once a month (making
an attending total of 9% of that generation). This has been going on for years
and churches are shutting, being turned into homes and restaurants everywhere
you look. Weddings, births and deaths are increasingly being celebrated in
secular backyard ceremonies. Secular neighbourhood centres, charities, hospitals, and government agencies are
taking over former Church roles.
MEANINGLESSNESS’ GREATEST
ALLY
I also presume to examine
the House of God because it has become meaninglessness’, greatest ally. As
education (especially scientific) spread widely through society from the
nineteenth century onwards, more people became aware that the House of God’s dogmas
and doctrines were incredible. The House’s “g” god – a brutal male figure from
ancient tribal imaginings – became, not only inadequate, but atheism’s strongest
argument. And the House’s primitive meaning of life (a one-off test for eternal
punishment or reward) became the strongest argument for meaninglessness. In a
rational age, belief in the religious model of life declined drastically and,
with nothing to replace it, so did belief in any special meaning or
purpose in life. Thinking people were driven away from the very idea of “T”
Truth by the irrational “t” truths of the House of God.
As evidence consider how an
early exposure to stern religion often leads to a stern reaction – many of
meaninglessness’ most ardent foot soldiers come from religious backgrounds.
Michael
Shermer (atheist, director of the
Skeptics Society, editor of Skeptic
magazine, author of, “Why People Believe Weird Things” and other books) is from
a fundamentalist family; Phillip Adams’ (atheist, sceptic, columnist, radio
commentator, author) father was a religious minister; Bertrand Russell (author
of the atheist hymnal – “Why I am not a Christian”) had a strict religious upbringing in the hands of a stern aunt.
All of these, and many other influential atheists, have spread, the gospel
according to meaninglessness because of their close experiences with the
incredibility of religion.
FUNDAMENTALISM
I also presume to examine
the House of God also because dangerous fundamentalism is on the rise. There
has been a growth in their numbers in percentage terms. From the above 2004 survey:
Assemblies of God up 20%;
After the horrors of 9/11,
people want safety in the arms of an omnipotent Protector. They are looking for
certainties – the surety of the word of God. And they also want something else
– they want revenge – an Old Testament vengeful god who will slay and torture
their enemies, preferably for eternity. Very few fundamentalists are full of
sunshine and light. The past of the House of God is murderous and the future
looks equally bloody – the biggest selling books in the Christian fundamentalist
world at this moment is the “Left Behind” (La Haye & Jenkins) series which revel
in the torments Christ inflicts upon the non-believers on his return to Earth
(after an “end of days” Holocaust scenario):
“The blood continued to rise. Millions of
birds flocked into the area and feasted on the remains…and the winepress was
trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the
horse’s bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs.”
“Glorious Appearing: The End of Days” pp.
250, 260.
Fundamentalists of all
stripes – Jewish, Moslem and Christian – cherish the notion that God will come
to reign on Earth following a holocaust where millions suffer – a scenario which
many feel they can, and must, help bring about! As fundamentalist numbers go up
as a percentage (even in orthodox Churches like the Anglican Church where
evangelicals who believe in the literal truth and inerrancy of the Bible are
gaining power) as the number of thinking parishoners go down, the House of
God’s congregation around the world is being reduced to a rump of scared,
weird, little guys – driven more by hate and fear than love.
Am I being too harsh? Consider
Peter Jensen, Archbishop of Sydney and intellectual midget (he failed first
year law twice before finding theology more suited to his intellectual
capacity) is a strict Bible-believing evangelical who opposes women and
homosexual clergy solely on the grounds on his belief in the inerrancy of the
Old Testament. This statement from him about why he is prepared to break his
House in two over the issue of homosexuality:
“This dispute is not really about
homosexuality. It’s about authority and who runs the church. To most of the
rest of us, God runs the church through the Bible.”
And this in the same
newspaper about his fear of the wrath of his god:
“One of the gravest weaknesses of
contemporary Christianity … is the little attention paid to the wrath of God.”
“The Age” (Newspaper –
OUR SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION LAGS
OUR TECHNICAL EVOLUTION
I presume to examine
religion because humanity is in a precarious state when our technological
evolution is way ahead of our spiritual evolution. We have atom bombs in the
hands of countries which have violent religions whose “t” truths include wrathful,
stone-age gods, and beliefs that violence – even Armageddon – is God’s will
because it says so in a “B” Book. Religions which, while purporting to be the
homes of our spirituality, are actually driven by the Darwinian motives of animal
fear and bodily survival. Religions are not aids towards our spiritual
evolution, but the biggest block in the road.
THE BLOODY HISTORY OF
RELIGION
I also presume to examine
the House of God because of its murderous and unchristian history. Many, if not
most, of our wars have had religious causes either directly (Crusades – where
the blood of the non-believers was actually up to the horse’s bridals)
or indirectly (the brutal Norman invasion of Britain was sanctioned –
barbarities pre-forgiven – by the Christian House of God in return for 10% of
the land), or they had at least some religious antecedents (the Jewish
Holocaust). There were also murderous religious inter-denominational wars (the
Catholic-Huguenots war in
So, the reasons why I
presume to examine the House of God is because: it is failing in its traditional
useful roles; it is meaninglessness’ greatest ally; our future looks bloody
with it in control; it is a hurdle in the road to our spiritual evolution; and its
history is murderous.
BUT HOW ABOUT THE GOOD
PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE OF GOD?
There remain some good (and
educated) people within the House of God who are seeking truth and genuine
spiritual understanding rather than power and comfort – Bishop Spong (“Christianity
Must Change or Die”, “The Sins of Scripture” etc.) comes to mind, as does Dr.
Francis Macnab (St. Michael’s, Melbourne), and the multi-member Jesus Seminar (who
published “The Five Gospels” – an attempt to find out what Jesus really said).
There are other devout clergy and lay people within the House of God seeking Truth
rather than seeking to bolster religious truths in the shape of doctrine and
dogma – but with the growth of fundamentalist Christian Churches and the
tendency of some previously more liberal faiths (like the Anglicans) to revert
to Bible-based evangelicalism, it does not look like the House of God is likely
to find the special meaning and ultimate purpose of life any time soon – nor a
credible “G” God. Trying to win an argument rather than seeking the Truth,
trying to gain power over parishoners, trying to gain some control over life’s caprices,
trying to attain eternal animal survival – still accurately describes the purpose
of the Christian House of God – in fact every House of God based on a “B” Book.
Just as many will also be
asking the question:
WHY BOTHER – WHY DOES THERE
HAVE TO BE A GOD?
There doesn’t “have to be a
God” – there either just is, or there isn’t. It remains philosophy’s most
important question. “Important” not because there is some pathetic god out
there who needs our equally pathetic praise and worship, but because to approach
more closely any real Divine may be to approach more closely our own real
selves – and purpose. To approach God may be to finally approach the universe, and
the unity of the All – from which everything – and everybody – originated. An
understanding of our unity could combat the separation which every despot has
contrived and maintained by religious, national, political, and ethnic means.
Separation from each other and our common needs and purpose has been the root cause
of all of our conflicts to date. So, while there doesn’t “have to be a God” I
argue that an honest attempt to find a credible Divine and special meaning in
life is an important counter for separation, meaninglessness, materialism and
the danger they hold for our survival.
In an effort to find God let’s
start by examining the place where some proclaim the Divine dwells – to see if
anyone is at home?
Again I state that this essay
is specifically an examination of the Christian House of God because it is the one
with which I am most familiar, but I suspect that what I find here will apply
to all religions in many substantial respects – especially religions of the “B”
Book.
An “H” House, like an “h” house, has a purpose, a design, and fabric. Let’s
examine each:
THE PURPOSE OF THE HOUSE OF
GOD
The original purpose of the Jesus movement was about
keeping alive the memory of Christ and his radical teachings of loving even
your enemies, of forgiveness over revenge, and of doing unto others what you
would have them do unto you. These were radical new ideas compared to the old
scriptures’ teachings like: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, loving only
your own tribe, and just refraining from doing unto others what you didn’t want
done to you. But over the centuries the Jesus movement became a religion, an
“H” House – and in the process its purpose changed – to be about comfort from
fear, control over our environment, power over people, and animal survival for
eternity.
COMFORT
There is nothing wrong with a little comfort – it is
a valid purpose for a genuine House of God. Life can be hard. Even when the
living is easy, every human lives with the knowledge of their mortality – their
eventual death, the separation from loved ones, the challenge of moving from
all they “know” in life into the unknown of death. These are not insubstantial existential
angsts, and humanity is deserving of a little comfort to keep functioning. But
the Christian House of God harbours a wrathful god of an ancient desert tribe –
a brutal god out of a harsh land at a brutal time – a god that gives love
conditionally, a god that metes out punishment for eternity – a god, in sum,
that causes discomfort as much as any comfort. The House of God cleverly uses
discomforting devices like sin, guilt, and the devil, in an effort to keep the
flock afraid of God’s wrath – and passing through the turnstiles. Religious
doctrines keep rational people at bay by their sheer incredibility – doctrines
like salvation, original sin, virgin birth, and Trinity. In this way the House
of God is populated by the credulous and fearful – all others denied the
comfort of a credible, loving God and a rational special meaning of life.
CONTROL
The present House of God offers control – control over our world’s dangers
– over life’s seeming capriciousness. The House of God offers control through
its influence over an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and interventionist
god. A power that comes from claiming to know what “he” wants – in Jesus’ day praise,
and animal sacrifice – now praise, worship, obedience to the Church and its
officers, and faith in its doctrines. The old god who could be controlled by
animal sacrifice is the same god that is tightly woven into the New Testament
and its Gospels
POWER
All Houses of God also have power as a purpose. Religion has been used
to get power over people, power over secular governments, power over other
religions, power over other countries. Power is achieved by recruiting the most
numbers to your god’s banner and any violence is approved because we are
growing the number of his followers – increasing his praise – his one, true, House.
Examples of this are to be found in the past bloody history of the “Christian” religion
and the present history of the Islamist movement – both about converting the
world to your god through any means.
Some of the worst violence has been, and is still, between denominations
of the one House of God – witness the extended murderous wars between the Roman
and Protestant factions of the Christian House of God in
So much for the purpose of the House of God. Let’s now consider its
design.
THE DESIGN OF THE HOUSE OF GOD
In its earliest days the design of the Jesus movement
was that of a community of equals regardless of gender. They were real
communists – their communities shared money, food, shelter, and goods for the
benefit of all. In this they were motivated by Jesus’ teachings of love for one
another and doing unto others as you would have them do unto you – rather than the
more recent communists who seemed to be more motivated by resentment and hate.
The first members of the Jesus movement were brave
men and women who often died brutal deaths for their beliefs. Jewish orthodoxy
was zealous and introducing new ideas against the received teachings of the old
scriptures was dangerous – as Jesus’ execution demonstrated – as did the
beatings, stonings and brutal deaths of many early Christians. Going against the
established Roman gods and the vested interests of the
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRISTIANITY
The Roman establishment came, in time, to recognise
the political potential of the meek and mild, law-abiding philosophies of the
Christian religion – Christianity exhorted even slaves to be obedient to their
masters and wait for the more important next life for their (eternal) freedom.
Emperor Constantine, cynically (he did not take on Christianity himself until
his death bed) latched onto Christianity as a tool of state to counter the
instability that existed in the empire after his struggle to replace
Diocletian.
Christ’s teachings had already become highly
embellished by doctrinaires like Paul, but this period of Roman
institutionalisation is when the last vestiges of the original Christian
movement became corrupted – taken on board by the
THE FABRIC OF THE HOUSE OF GOD
Surely the House of God has stout fabric: walls of
Christian fellowship and a roof of Christian charity for the less fortunate? Quite
so, but unfortunately the fabric is deeply flawed because its foundation stone
– the Bible – is unreliable.
THE BIBLE
The foundation of the House of God is the Bible – a
“B” Book – supposedly written by God :
“the
Bible is authoritative because of its divine authorship … items of theological
belief must have either explicit or implicit support [from the Bible] or be dismissed.”
- “Systematic Theology – A Pentecostal
Perspective”, P. 42 (Ed. Stanley Horton)
The growing appeal of evangelical/fundamentalist
religions stems from the certainty they profess in uncertain times. All is
certain, written in black and white by God in the Bible. They are also
particularly appealing to young people going through vulnerable periods in
their life – like adolescence – and to older people facing death. Other
religions of the Book, like the Muslim and Jewish religions are also becoming
dominated by their fundamental elements. There is much comfort in the idea of an
instruction manual written by God. But such comfort is only available to those
who can suspend rationality sufficiently to believe that God actually wrote the
Bible – an essential task in the eyes of the fundamentalists :
“Reason
is a good servant of the revelation of God [the Bible], but it is not a good master over that revelation. … human reason that
denies divine revelation has always come under the influence of sin and Satan
ever since Adam’s fall.” – (ibid. P. 45).
So, the Bible is to be digested in its entirety –
Adam and Eve accepted rather than scientific evidence for an entirely different
Genesis? But surely only fundamentalists believe the Bible to be literally the
word of God? Not so, even less fundamental Christianity holds that the Bible is
pivotal in its importance – the word of God. The Oath of Conformity required of
every candidate for ordination in the
“I
do believe the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the word of
God and to contain all things necessary to salvation.”
-
The Sins of Scripture, John Shelby Spong, P. 16.
But, back to reality, the Bible did not descend from
the heavens on the wings of a snow-white dove. Every part of the Bible was
written by man (none by woman – as is quickly apparent by reading it) over a
long period of time. Jesus did not write, nor see any part of, the New
Testament. The New Testament was not written by Jesus’ disciples, as some
disingenuously claim, but the various gospels were written at various times one
and two generations after his death – at the earliest. The entire Bible, rather
than the word of God through inspiration, it is very obviously the word of man
through perspiration. As well as writing it, man also compiled it – selecting which
of the many Old Testament writings and New Testament gospels were to be included.
There has been controversy and there have been many different forms of the
Bible. Some include the Apocrypha and some don’t; the size of the Apocrypha may
vary; the number of books in the Old Testament section may vary; many feel the
gospel of Thomas (uncovered in the middle of last century) has more
authenticity and apostolic authority than the other four and should be
included. There is also doubt over which of Paul’s letters were actually
written by him. And Revelations is obviously the work of a disturbed human mind
rather than God. All this has resulted in several different forms of Bible and
the discovery of the
There is also much controversy about different translations
from the original languages it was written in (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) and those
it passed through (Latin, English etc.). Also much room for variation in the
hand-copying process. Far from it being the one true word of God, man is still
writing the Bible.
The Bible has, like most
foundations, also felt the pressure of time. Scientific knowledge has eaten
away at its claim to be the work of God. The Biblical Earth-centricity of the
Cosmos has been revealed as illusory by the sciences of cosmology and astronomy;
Genesis has been revealed as myth by biology; the history related in the Old
Testament has been revealed as false by (Jewish) archaeology. As for the New
Testament, the developing field of non-religious (i.e. neutral, non-vested
interest) biblical scholarship has increased our knowledge of those times and introduced
non-ideological insights into Jesus and what he really said – as opposed to the
words put in his mouth during the “H” House-building process after his death.
Some of the ancillary fabric of the House of God does
have quite a bit of beauty. Much of the architecture is beautiful – as is the art
and music. But if your foundations are shot then the whole edifice is unstable.
So, it’s important we look at the foundations of the House of God more closely,
to examine the evidence and test my assertions. Time to examine :
THE HOLY BIBLE
Is the Bible
the word of God, or inspired by God? Because the kneebone of many pivotal Christian
doctrines are connected to the thighbone of ancient Old Testament stories (like
the Christian doctrine of salvation being derived from the Garden of Eden story
of the committing of our original sin) we have to go right back to the start of
the Bible. "In the Beginning” there was the:-
OLD TESTAMENT
In the words of John Rogerson :
“Somehow,
writings as disparate as laws, popular stories, dynastic annals, proverbs,
laments, love stories and psalms came to be regarded as scripture.”
(P. xiii Oxford
History of the Bible)
So the disparate words of man came “somehow” to be
regarded as scripture – the word of God? How did this come about?
The Old Testament is the ancient saga of the Hebrews
– a grouping of Semitic tribes who descended from Abraham and lived a
semi-nomadic existence in the area we now call the
The Bible also contains equally unreliable history.
Jewish archaeologists have found Biblical history to be very dubious at best,
false at worst, and politically inspired all the time:
“The
familiar stories about David and Solomon, based on a few early folk traditions,
are the result of extensive reworking and editorial expansion during the four
centuries that followed David and Solomon’s reigns…they contain little reliable
history.”
“David
and Solomon”, Finkelstein and Silberman. P.17
Contrary to the Bible, this recent archaeology has
found that
How could God get science and history wrong? Not
looking much like the word of God so far – more like the word of man,
attributed to his “g” god to give it authority.
The Old Testament does contain social and moral laws
like the Ten Commandments which were essential for a society growing in size
and evolving away from a tribal and semi-nomadic existence to a more settled,
agrarian one. These commandments are nothing unique, being similar to the moral
laws of other societies preceding the Hebrews who had previously been through a
similar transition.
The Bible is also the Hebrew’s attempt to understand
the meaning of life and to approach the numinous. It often expresses itself
with not a little beauty :
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh …
(Ecclesiastes
3:1-4)
which, as the folk song popular in the 60’s shows,
still resonates with us today – “turn, turn, turn”.
But there is not much beauty in the Bible – it is
vastly outweighed by the divinely-sanctioned slavery, ethnic cleansing, sexism,
and brutality to animals. This from Christopher Hitchens:
“Then
there is the very salient question of what the commandments do not say. Is it too modern to notice that there
is nothing about the protection of children from cruelty, nothing about rape,
nothing about slavery, and nothing about genocide.
“God
is Not Great”, P. 100
While Hitchens is often as fundamentalist as the
religions he criticises and the pages of his book are somewhat spittle-flecked,
he does have a good point. In a little while we will see that the Bible’s god
not only does not proscribe the things on Hitchens’s list, but approves of them
(and murder, and cruelty to animals) so long as they are done by his chosen
tribe – the tribe that invented him.
The Old Testament also contains psalms and songs designed
to influence a fearsome and capricious god. A vain god who could be inveigled
with praise and worship. A primitive god who could be propitiated with animal
sacrifice – a god in man’s image.
Also in the Old Testament scriptures are the
prophecies. Their tone waxes ominous as they try to control the population who
were swelling as a result of easier times in their “promised land”. The Hebrews
were also exposed to the religions of the surrounding peoples and were often swayed
by local nature religions, and gods like Baal. Hebrew prophets raged about hell
in their tussle for the hearts and minds of men and ranted about the dire
consequences of not following the god their ancestors had created. They warned
about not fearing and praising this angry, vain man/being who was murderously
jealous and insecure of these other gods.
Am I being fair in my description of the Old
Testament? Surely a sophisticated reading of it will show that it is not
“wrong” and “incorrect” – as I accuse it of being, but all allegorical and
metaphorical for higher, Divine meanings and understandings? Let’s look at it book
by book to see if it resembles the word of God? I will be using the The New International and the New Revised Standard versions of the
Bible.
GENESIS
The beautiful and elaborate creation myths of
pre-scientific desert tribes. For beauty and inventiveness, Genesis is definitely
on a par with all other creation myths – like the Australian Aborigine’s
“Rainbow Serpent”, for example. Everything created by God in six days then a
rest. Earth the centre of the Universe, even the sun revolves around the Earth
– the other planets formed on day 4 to light Earth’s night skies.
We now know, thanks to the discoveries of astronomy
and cosmology, that Genesis is wrong. Even the
As well as misinformation about the Earth and the sun,
Genesis also tells us about the creation of life – the plants and the animals created
in an instant – and the Garden of Eden – the lion and the lamb lying down
together. Science in the shape of biology tells us this is false. Life evolved
over millions of years, and all life has one source. For example, it can be
empirically shown that humans are related to plants (65% similar DNA to bananas)
as well as animals (98% similar DNA to chimpanzees). We know science works, it
is not a construction of the devil, we prove it right by successfully using the
products of its truths – even fundamentalists use the products of biology many
times every day in their foods and medicines. You can’t use science
successfully on the one hand and deny it on the other. The Bible’s primitive
biological myths are – beyond reasonable doubt – wrong.
Those who believe the Bible to be the word of God
have to ask themselves how could God be wrong? And, if the Bible is wrong here,
is it wrong in other places?
Sophisticated residents of the House of God would be
bored by all this, having already accepted Genesis largely as metaphor and
allegory. But the problem lies in the word “largely” – there is a part of the
Garden of Eden story they still must accept as true. The concept of original
sin, allegorised in Adam and Eve’s action of seeking knowledge, is essential to
the Christian Church’s notion of salvation and redemption. Humanity was stained
by Adam and Eve’s original sin (and condemned to mortality and painful
childbirth!). Salvation is a doctrine worked up by Paul and other Christian
House of God founding fathers in the New Testament, and it is pivotal to present,
sophisticated orthodox Christian belief. Humanity is inherently sinful and “Jesus
died so his blood may wash away the stains of our sins” is a phrase repeated ad
infinitum at my orthodox Christian school. But beyond reasonable doubt, the
Bible story of the Garden of Eden is invention – and original sin with it. We
will examine this part of Pauline doctrine further when we get to the New
Testament.
The Serpent’s tree was also called “the tree of
knowledge” and Adam and Eve’s action of eating its fruit is a metaphor for our
original sin – the choosing of knowledge over faith – a very bad choice as far
as religion is concerned. The choosing of knowledge before blind faith after
the Enlightenment was the beginning of the end for religion’s cornerstone position
in Western societies. Religion’s power relies on turning your back on the quest
for knowledge and truth – it depends on blind faith because its doctrine is
incredible.
NOAH’S
Next in Genesis we have Noah’s
No need to go on and, indeed, why mention it at all
because no one with a brain believes this stuff any more, right? Well I had a
scary conversation with four young people who have just graduated from a
secular university the other day who believe all of the Bible, including Noah,
to be true. By way of explaining how Noah was able to cover the world to get
two of every animal before oceanic ships they assured me the world was much
smaller then!? The fear of the slaughtering, hell-casting Old Testament god has
done strange things to their brains. If it was not so tragic it would be a
laughing matter.
BEGATTING
We move on in Genesis to lots of begatting.
Archbishop James Ussher in 1650 added up all the begatting and came up with the
figure of the world’s age – 23rd October 4004 B.C. – about 6000
years old! Now you can forgive Ussher
because science was in its infancy then, but what can we say of the ignorance
of people today who still believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and that this
is the real age of the Universe?
But wait, there’s more. There is the story of
EXODUS
The next Book of the Old Testament. Here we have
Egypt, plagues, Passovers by murderous angels killing all non-Jewish
first-borns, release, pursuit, Red Sea parting, Ten Commandments, social laws cementing
revenge into place (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth) as God sanctioned, God’s
imprimatur for the ownership of other humans called slaves, laws about sexual
relations, altars, Arks (not Noah’s), tabernacles and Sabbaths.
And the Levites killed 3,000 of their fellows and
thus were especially blessed by God :
[Moses] “said to them, “This is what the Lord, the
God of
So, let’s see if we have this right – Moses returns
from the mount with the ten commandments tucked under his arm (surely the most
important of which is “Thou Shalt Not Kill”) and then sets about killing 3,000
of his own brethren? And the Bible, being the word of God, must be right – “this
is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says … each killing his brother and friend
and neighbour”? Right, sure thing – God urging people to kill one another then
making them “blessed” because of their ability to commit pitiless atrocities
against their brothers, friends and neighbours – and all because He was jealous
of the alternate god the people had constructed in Moses absence? Now that’s
just got to be “G” God – hasn’t it – or is “he” just another “g” god invented
by man (constructed brutal and violent to keep the flock in order)?
GOD?
This same strange, violent, murderous, pitiless god
also decreed:
21:4 It is permissible to keep wife and children
of servants (because it is just the same as the natural increase of cattle).
21:7 OK to
sell your daughter to someone as a servant.
21:32 Slaves
are lesser beings (paving the way for the slave trade).
22:18 We should kill witches – “Do not allow a
sorceress to live” (paving the way for
I particularly like this bit :
“ ‘If
a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct
result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up
after a day or two, since the slave is his property.’ ”(21:20-21)
So firstly, slavery is OK to God and, secondly, it
was OK to beat them so badly that they were unconscious for a day or two!?
Obviously if the slave was able to get up after a couple of days the beating
can’t have been too severe?! What sort of people would regard this as the
truth, the word of God?
And this bit:
“ ‘If
a bull gores a man or a woman to death, the bull must be stoned to death, and
its meat will not be eaten. But the owner of the bull will not be held
responsible.’ ” (21:28)
Can you imagine the senseless cruelty involved in
stoning a bull to death? Bear in mind these are the actual quoted words
of God as recounted by Moses?
Let’s have a look at the next Book.
LEVITICUS
Laws and rules on such things as offerings,
sacrifices, priests, clean and unclean food, skin diseases, mildew, unlawful
sex, capital punishment. We learn here God will like us more if we kill animals
and burn them on an altar as sacrifices to him.
Animal sacrifices – what sort of primitive tribal god
are we dealing with here? The sort that regards menstruating women as unclean :
“A
woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially
unclean for seven days, just as she is unclean during her monthly period.”
But “If she gives birth to a daughter,
for two weeks the woman will be unclean.” (12:2&5)
Dirty things these women – especially if they give
birth to another woman! The word of God? Got to be if it’s in the Bible!
And slavery again :
“Your
male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you
may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among
you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your
property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make
them slaves for life.” (25:44-46).
Don’t know what all the fuss about slavery is – God
says it’s OK!?
NUMBERS
More wanderings, god-sanctioned murder and
destruction.
More sexism: (5:11) – A man can test(?!) a wife just
because he feels jealous.
And violence: (15:32) – Sabbath-breaker stoned to
death with god’s approval.
And god-sanctioned ethnic cleansing :
“The
Lord listened to
And more brutal jealousy of other gods. When the
Israelites bowed to the gods of the Moabites :
“the anger of the Lord was kindled against
And slaughter of children and women, and the rape of
the maidens :
[Of the Midanites] “Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,
but save for yourself every girl who has never slept with a man.” (31:15)
Moslem terrorists at least have to wait for heaven to
get their virgins! If this is not ethnic cleansing what is it – apart from
infanticide of course? No wonder fundamentalists are scared witless of such a
god.
Obviously, so far, the Biblical “g” god has nothing
to say about “G” God. But if you disagree and this god is your God what does it
say about you? Somewhere here must be the real God? Let’s try:
DEUTERONOMY
Taking over
More divinely sanctioned war crimes and ethnic
cleansing – all men, women and children of Heshbon (2:34) and
Divine laws about breaking the neck of a heifer
belonging to the nearest village to atone for any unsolved murder in the area:
(21:3).
And its OK to murder a rebellious son (was there ever
any other sort?).
“If
a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother
… his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at
the gate of the town. They shall say to the elders, ‘This son of ours is
stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is profligate and a drunkard.’
Then all the men of the town will stone him to death.” (21:18-21)
How about this bit – anyone wounded in the genitals
could not worship God :
“No
one who has been emasculated by crushing or cutting may enter the assembly of
the Lord.” (23:1)
If these are the words of God then it is a very
strange god.
For those who think it is ridiculous to take the Old
Testament literally it is worth remembering that the writers of the New
Testament Gospels did – and they put the words of these scriptures into the
mouth of Jesus constantly in an effort to prove the authority of Jesus. So if
they were capable of mistaking this for the truth how do we know they were not
mistaken in what they believed to be true when they wrote the New Testament
from second- and third-hand anecdotes of Jesus’ words and deeds?
JOSHUA
After wandering about in the desert for 40 years the
Hebrew tribes cross the
“They
devoted the city to the Lord and destroyed with the sword every living thing in
it – men and women, young and old, cattle sheep and donkeys.” (6:21)
What “devotion” – that would have pleased the “Lord”
– every man, woman, child and donkey? Then they “devoted” more murderous ethnic
cleansing to the Lord :
8:25 Women of Ai murdered.
10:12
God showed his pleasure by stopping the sun from going down for a day so
that Joshua could see to slaughter his enemies at Gibeon (or what was left of
them after God had slaughtered most of them himself with hailstones).
10:28 Everyone in Makkedah, Libnah,
By now “the Lord” would be wading in gore, but he
goes for a nice finishing touch at 11:9 when the horses are ham-strung. Now all
you animal-lovers, do you have any idea what terror and pain those horses
suffered and for how long, after being left lying on the ground ham-strung?
Their suffering would have made Christ’s end seem positively humane.
Seen your God yet?
Maybe in the next Book?
1 SAMUEL
“The Almighty says … ‘Now go, attack
the Amalekites … Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and
infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’” (15:2-3).
“Infants, cattle, sheep, camels, and donkeys”! Just
got to be God, hasn’t it?
And on and on we go through
2 SAMUEL
Hamstringing more horses 8:4), Solomon (700 wives and
300 concubines). More battles, bloodbaths.
And this god was fickle in his support – the angels
saved the Hebrews from the Assyrians but they could not save them from
Nebuchadnezzar who carts the whole box and dice off to
JUDGES; KINGS; CHRONICLES
Judges, Kings, Chronicles dance their way across the bloody
Old Testament stage with more divinely sanctioned murder, rape and pillage. The
historical figures of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes strut the stage. The Jewish
people get liberated by the Persians then
EZRA and NEHEMIAH come along. ESTER marries Xerxes.
JOB
Job now offers us this conundrum : why do bad things
happen to good people? When faced with a similar conundrum many loose faith in
the idea of God and along with it the possibility of any special meaning in
life. This of course is a problem of religion’s own making. By selling humanity
the idea of an omnipotent and interventionist god who can be influenced by
worship and prayer, religion creates a problem when that god does not intervene
positively for righteous people and/or negatively for bad people.
Even further – if God is interfering and omnipotent
and “evil” happens to babies, small children and good people – is God then,
perhaps, evil? I will examine this in more depth in the essay – Examination of
the House of Disbelief .
But Job did admit that he was not naturally good but,
like a lot of religious people, only good because :
“I
dreaded destruction from God and for fear of his splendor I could not do such
things” (31:23).
The Bible dodges the deeper philosophical question of
what is real goodness. Surely a person who does not believe in God, but is good
naturally, is better than Job who was only good “for fear”? Religion has always been about conditional goodness –
being good to avoid hell or to gain the benefit of immortality – physical
resurrection in heaven. In the New Testament, as we shall see, Paul dabbles
with the idea of true goodness but comes down on the side of believing
incredible doctrine (faith) is better than good deeds!?
And now we arrive at the next section of the Old
Testament, which turns praise of a needy god into an art form.
PSALMS
Psalms lards the Old Testament with poems, songs and
prayers to a violent and needy god – trying to curry favour through praise. How
vain and needy do we imagine God to be that “He” wants our praise and worship,
how stupid does humanity imagine God to be that we feel God could possibly be
satisfied or fooled by it? All the professions of love in this part of the Old
Testament are very similar to what we now recognise as the “Stockholm Syndrome”
– where captives fall in “love” with violent captors who have the power of life
or death over them – a way of survival by propitiation.
I remember asking my religious studies teacher at
primary school why we existed, and he answered my question with: “To worship
God.” Even my 11 year-old mind could work out that this was not even close to
the meaning of life. Could a Divine who knows everything believe our flattery
driven by self-interest? Could “He” be so desperately needy of praise that he
actually created us to meet these pathetic needs?
As well as praise the Psalms express anger, despair,
sadness, guilt and doubt. They also manage to wish that God’s wrath will be
brought forth upon the wicked – generally defined as anyone not of your beliefs.
Much of the New Testament is based on the Old
Testament – I will discuss the possible reasons for this when we examine the
New Testament. Psalm 22 has the words and deeds that are used in Mark and
Matthew to describe Jesus’ crucifixion:
“My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
…a band of evil men has encircled me,
they have pierced my hands and feet
…They divide my garments among them
and cast lots for my clothing.”
from
Psalm 22: (1-18)
Some like to think that the Old Testament proves the
New Testament true – and vice versa. But maybe the New Testament was written to
follow the Old intentionally – both, propping each other up in an unstable
bipod of faith alone – rather than any proof. In the other, later, Gospels of
Luke and John the words and deeds of the crucifixion differ significantly – we
will also examine why this may be so when we get to them.
In the words of Psalms there is also some beauty :
“By the rivers of
when we
remembered
There on the poplars
we hung our
harps …
But not for long – revenge wins the day – and the
usual blood, guts and hate ooze across the page:
“O Daughter of
happy is he
who repays you
for what you
have done to us –
he who seizes your infants
and dashes
them against the rocks.”
(Psalm
137: 8-9)
A good one for the kiddies at Sunday School perhaps?
The more I read the Bible, the more I believe that
you will not find God in it – but your self – in the bits you hold to be true,
and especially – in the bits you hold dear?
PROVERBS
Fear is the beginning of knowledge? :
“The
fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and
discipline.” (1:7)
But the funk that fear produces is invariably the end
of knowledge. Fear is why fundamentalists believe in Adam and Eve, Noah, the
whole box and dice.
ECCLESIASTES
Ancient existentialism – meaninglessness rules OK? :
“ ‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’
says the Teacher.
‘ Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.’ ” (1:2)
There is more – wisdom is meaningless, pleasure is
meaningless, toil is meaningless. The bad sometimes prosper and the good
sometimes suffer. All aspects of life – wealth, position, professional success,
and pleasure are futile because we must die in the end.
I guess we all have days like that, but luckily very
few of us get into print.
The author of Ecclesiastes finds meaning in fearing
his primitive god:
“Life
has no meaning but to Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole
duty of man.” (12:13-14)
But some beautiful words about the human condition (mentioned
earlier) which still strike a chord with us today :
“a
time to weep and a time to laugh …”(3:1-4).
SONG OF SONGS
We now get pop songs about love and sex :
“Awake,
north wind,
and come, south wind!
Blow on my garden,
that its fragrance may spread abroad.
Let my lover come into this garden
And taste its choice fruits.
-
Song of Songs (4:16)
And some ghastly sexism:
ISAIAH
“The Lord will wash away the filth of the
women of
Definitely the word of God! How could anybody deny
it? Inspiring – kind of makes me proud to be a man – filthy things these women!
JEREMIAH
More of the same. Judgement and punishment from a
vain, jealous and capricious god. Also irrational : God gets jealous because
the Jews worship other gods and he sends them to
LAMENTATIONS
Well named.
EZEKIEL
Quotes the very words of God :
“Again
the word of the Lord came to me: ‘Son of man, when the people of
Is that sexist ravings, or the words of your God?
THE PROFITS OF DOOM
Daniel; Hosea; Joel; Amos; Obadiah; Jonah (and the
whale); Micah; Nahum; Habakkuk; Zephaniah; Haggai; Zechariah. Doom, gloom,
judgement and the punishment of god upon his unfaithful people. The prophets
are a dyspeptic lot bereft of joy and inspiration trying to outdo each other
with fear of the brutality of their “g” god. But god will return one day, and
forgiving his chosen people, will place them at their rightful place above
their enemies the Babylonians and Assyrians and restore the temple in
None of which actually happened. The Israelites had
many more conquerors to endure yet – Greeks, Romans, Moslems – and the
obliteration forever of their renewed temple.
Let’s end with the end and a little bit of :-
MALACHI
Quoting the Lord Almighty :
“ ‘Surely
the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every
evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming which will set them on
fire,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘Not a root or branch will be left to them. But
for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing on
its wings. And you will go out and leap like calves released from the stall.
Then you will trample down the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of
your feet on the day when I do these things,’ says the Lord Almighty.”
(4:1-3)
And so here endeth the lesson. The Old Testament
grinds to a halt with trampling, burning and the gnashing of teeth – in a cloud
of sackcloth and ashes.
CONCLUSION: THE OLD TESTAMENT – THE WORD
OF GOD?
So, are these ancient scriptures the word of God, or
at least inspired by God?
How could they possibly be the word of God? How could
“G” God be ignorant of science – cosmology, astronomy, biology – which reveal
the Old Testament’s explanations to be wrong – myths, stories, attempts to
understand the world by ancients around the tribal campfires. How also could
God be ignorant of history – or inspire a false one?
BIBLICAL HISTORY
Israeli scholars have this to say about the findings
of recent archaeology in the holy lands:
“Its
finds have revolutionised the study of
early
- (Finkelstein
and Silberman, “The Bible Unearthed”. P.3)
And this:
“Much
of what is commonly taken for granted as accurate history – the stories of the
patriarchs, the Exodus, the conquest of Canaan, and even the saga of the
glorious united monarchy of David and Solomon – are, rather, the creative
expressions of a powerful religious reform movement that flourished in the
kingdom of Judah in the Late Iron Age.”
-
Finkelstein & Silberman (Op. Cit. P.
23)
Israel Finkelstein is the director of the Nadler
Institute of Archaeology at
They are not alone. Z’ev Herzog, professor of
archaeology in Tel Aviv, has this to say on the matter :
“key
parts of the Bible – the foundation stone of Western civilisation – the
underpinnings of today’s Israeli state – are, in historical terms , bunk.”
-
The
Spectator, November,1999.
The Spectator summarises Herzog thus: “David and
Solomon [were] ‘at most’ the leaders
of a small tribal fiefdom, and [Herzog] claims that the Jews did not embrace
monotheism with Moses on Mt. Sinai” – an episode he says probably never
happened – “but did so, hundreds of years later, when their monarchy was in
decline.”
A PAROCHIAL GOD?
The god invented by the Hebrew tribes was, funnily
enough, only interested in those tribes – his “chosen people”. But who chose
who? How could the one true God of all the Universe be so parochial – be just
god of the twelve tribes – and every other person suitable for slaughter and slavery?
But this parochialism only occurs in the Old Testament, right? Wrong, unfortunately,
as we shall see in a minute, it continues into the New Testament where the Old
Testament-believing Gospellers put into the mouth of Jesus words stating he is
“only sent to the lost sheep of Israel”
(Matthew 15:24), and have him refer to gentiles as pigs (as in “casting pearls
before swine”) and dogs (as in “I must feed my children before the dogs”). It
continues with the raving loony who wrote Revelations where Paradise only has
twelve gates – one each for 12,000 members from each of the twelve tribes of
Israel (but only males unsullied by women!) – gentiles are even seen as one of
the plagues besetting paradise!
IF NOT THE WORD OF GOD, THEN WHAT?
It is the story of one people, not the story of all
people. It is an attempt by one group of pre-scientific, semi-nomadic, desert
tribesmen to understand the beginning of the Universe and the meaning of life.
It is also the attempt of those tribes to locate themselves in the story of the
Earth. Naturally enough, like most other peoples who invent a religion, they
located themselves at the centre. The “history” that is in it, is their supposedly
“Divine” title deeds to a land taken from others. And it is the story of a
religious movement and its attempts to take the power of God unto themselves.
In the words of Finkelstein and Silberman it is: “the creative expression of a
powerful religious reform movement”.
One thing it is not – the Truth – the “word of God”.
That they were writing the word of God was never claimed by the many authors in
the Bible. Much of the Old Testament was carried for many years in the oral
tradition and was subject to constant discussion and change. There were some
written texts of the Torah (like Deuteronomy) but it was a long time before
they became “scripture”.
”Although
these texts were revered, they had not yet become ‘scripture’. People felt free
to alter older writings and there was no canon of prescribed sacred books.”
- “On the Bible”, Karen Armstrong
(Pp. 24-25)
ARE THERE ANY UNIQUE TRUTHS IN THE OLD TESTAMENT?
Are the Jewish scriptures unique? How about the Ten
Commandments, for example?
The Ten Commandments are the basic laws necessary for
a successful society but many societies had something similar before the
Hebrews promulgated theirs. The Ten Commandments are not unique to the Bible – the
above article from The Spectator states they are: “the nearest that mankind still possess to a commonly shared moral code.”
And, as Hitchens states above, there was much left out of the commandments that
today we have proscribed (e.g. rape, genocide, slavery). And there are other stories
in the Old Testament which have been borrowed from nearby civilisations –
Noah’s
So if the Old Testament science and creation stories
are myths, if its history is invented, a lot of its laws and stories borrowed
from earlier civilisations which were not God’s chosen people – not recipients
of God’s Truth – how can the Judeo/Christian religion claim to be the one true
faith? And its shockingly violent, sexist, pro-slavery, ethnic cleansing, cruel
to dumb animals god the one true God? I don’t think so and neither does the
vast majority of the Western world who have voted with their feet when they
left the House of God.
But many would say that the New Testament is a vastly
different kettle of fish – much more reliable and relevant – surely the word of
God? Let’s examine it to see if this is so?
THE NEW TESTAMENT
Regarded by many people as surely the words and/or
inspiration of God, the gospels, books, letters, and prophecies which make up
the New Testament were compiled by the Fathers of the Christian House of God from
the many gospels and writings available at the time. The documents were chosen
supposedly by their apostolic authority. But as to what had “apostolic”
authority was entirely within the say-so of the Church Fathers – who were
building a “H” House at the time (and the say-so others who had a vested
interest in that new House of God – like Emperor Constantine). There was :
“doctrinal
disagreement” and “which text was
ancient and authoritative, how it was to be interpreted, and which expressions
of belief were ‘in harmony’ with particular apostolic writings were intimately
bound together, and, inevitably, were entangled with power politics among
Christian bishops and their royal patrons.”
Margaret Davies (from “The
When the New Testament was compiled the apostles of
Jesus were long dead and had no say-so in the selection of available material at
all. The gospels were based on information carried for many years in the verbal
tradition, and the four chosen ones were only written down 50-90 years after
Jesus’ death. Even when written, they gave significantly different versions of
the same important events and then other subsequent problems for their veracity
were caused by varying translations, religious editing, and mistakes in
transcription. However unreliable, the New Testament is the only source
material we have of the most remarkable man in human history – a man with a
most important message for any special meaning in life. The New Testament is
the only near contemporary recording of the life, words, and acts of Jesus (bar
a couple of lines in passing by Roman and Jewish historians) and to get closer
to this important man and his message it is necessary to examine the New
Testament.
Firstly the Gospels:
MATTHEW (about 85 A.D.)
The gospel of Matthew is the first gospel recorded in
the New Testament – although it was not
the first written – biblical scholarship indicates that Mark was actually the
first written (about 70 A.D).
Matthew begins with a table of Jesus’ descent from
Joseph – which happens to be different to the descent listed in Luke (3:23-38).
So from the start we have disagreement between the Gospels – God seems to have
forgotten what he wrote in the other Gospel?
But the really big question here is: why is Joseph’s
lineage important if he was not the father of Jesus? Mary was a virgin
impregnated by God but Matthew in an effort to tie Jesus to the Old Testament
as “the son of David, son of Abraham”
(1:1) went to great lengths to trace Joseph all the way to David and Abraham? Why?
Joseph was not Jesus’ father. Mary was “visited” by an angel? : “before their marriage she found that she was
with child by the Holy Spirit.” (1:18) therefore Joseph’s ancestors were
irrelevant. Mary is the only human Jesus was related to through the flesh – maybe
it is her ancestors that are more relevant and should be listed? Page 1 and we
are mired in quicksand – not a good beginning in the search for suitable
foundational material for the House of God – more contradiction than concrete.
To contemplate the question of why Matthew concocted
Jesus’ ancestors we have to consider the fact that to have any chance of converting
the Jewish people to the Jesus movement, Jesus had to be firmly located within,
and authorised by, the Jewish scriptures – preferably as the Messiah – the
long-awaited leader of the Jews who was going to lead his people against their
enemies and vanquish them. To do this, Jesus had to be made out to comply with
what was written about the Messiah in the Old Testament – crucially he had to
be descended from David and Abraham. This is why Matthew traced Joseph’s
lineage – I guess he hoped everybody would overlook the fact that Joseph was
only Jesus’ step-dad!?
For Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah he also had to be
born in
Matthew to establish Jesus as the Messiah had to make
other Old Testament prophecy seem fulfilled. If he was to be seen as the
Messiah, Jesus had to announce his arrival to his people by riding into
“Jesus
sent two disciples, saying to them, ‘Go to the village ahead of you, and at
once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and
bring them to me’…This took place to fulfil what was spoken through the
prophet: ‘See, your king comes to you, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt,
the foal of a donkey’.”
-
Matthew
21: 2-5
Matthew’s reference to Jesus as the “king” (of
Matthew puts words in Jesus’ mouth (which the other
Gospellers missed) that imply Jesus saw himself as the Jewish Messiah – the
triumphant (and violent) leader of the Jews – not a peacemaker:
“ ‘You
must not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to
bring peace but a sword. After all I have come to pit a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother … a person’s enemies are members of the same
household.’ ” (10:34).
The forgiving, “peace on earth” Jesus that most of us
think of as the real Jesus is here, rather, the anticipated warrior king of the
O.T. To proselytize the gospellers’ intended audience Jesus had to be closely tied
to the Old Testament (which of course was not “Old” to them, but the current
and only true scripture). The words Matthew has Jesus say come almost verbatim
from Micah (7:5-6).
Matthew also goes to some lengths to convince his
Jewish audience that Jesus had not come to threaten their present religion and
the veracity of its scriptures. Matthew has Jesus assuring his Jewish audience:
“ ‘Do
not suppose that I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets; I did not
come to abolish but to complete’ ” (5:17)
Matthew’s Old Testament Jesus comes complete with
plenty of Old Testament hell-casting – and for minor “sins” we have all
committed:
“‘if he sneers at him [his brother] he will have to answer for it in the fires
of hell’ ” (5:22).
And :
“ ‘If
a man looks at a woman with a lustful eye, he has already committed adultery
with her in his heart’ ”(5:28)
Are these the real words of Jesus? Jesus who, in another
Gospel, tells the bandit hanging on a cross beside him at Golgotha that he will
meet with Jesus shortly in paradise – even though he has committed far worse
sins than sneering and lusting? Who of us hasn’t occasionally sneered at
someone – or lusted a little? We’re headed to hell for these paltry offences –
from the same mouth that said: “Father
forgive them” as they hammered the nails into him, and “let he who is without sin cast the first
stone”?
Not only does Matthew have Jesus’ casting people into
hell for sneering and lusting but he has Jesus casting whole towns into hell just
for not receiving the disciples’ teachings :
“ ‘on
the day of judgement it will be more bearable for the
And yet, and yet – amongst all the usual biblical
hell and damnation, amongst all the rabid proselytizing of Matthew – there is a
glimmer of a new voice, a voice with a radical message. A voice that goes
against the usual O.T. current, a voice that is not only radical but unique and
daring – a voice that sounds distinct and has something special to say. A voice
with a new understanding of what we could be – that challenges us to defy the
old, vicious teachings of the O.T. scriptures:
“ You
have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye and, tooth for tooth’ (Exodus
21:24 & Lev. 24:20 & Deut. 19:21).
But I tell you, ‘Do not set yourself against the man who wrongs you. If a man
slaps you on the right cheek, turn and offer him your left.” (Matthew 5:39)
And again:
“You
have heard it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy’. But I tell
you: Love your enemies and pray for your persecutors … your heavenly Father who
makes his sun rise on good and bad alike, and sends the rain on the honest and
the dishonest. If you love only those who love you what reward can you
expect?…if you greet only your brothers what is there extraordinary about
that?’ ” (5:44-48)
So which voice represents the real Jesus?
Before we arrive at the above new, different voice of
love for enemies and turning the other cheek, Matthew has had Jesus threaten us
with hell four times and mention the devil at least five – then threatens to cast
humanity into hell and brimstone for eternity at: 8:12, 10:15, 10:28, 11:23,
13:42&50, 18:8-9 for paltry offences. Readers of the Old Testament must
have felt right at home – which of course was Matthew’s idea. But, in his
proselytizing zeal, Matthew tars Jesus with the Old Testament brush of hell,
hate and anger, and feathers him with the Old Testament god of fear and guilt.
Readers of the “New” Testament end up confused by the
contrary words credited to Jesus and his revolutionary message of the primacy
of love and forgiveness is diluted – if not completely lost. We have two
different Jesus’ with two different messages – and a credibility problem for
the Bible and the God who supposedly wrote it – and a credibility problem for
any religion based on it.
This fuzziness, found throughout the Bible is what
has enabled Christianity to find authority from the alleged words of Jesus and/or
God for any action – including slaughtering entire towns (in the case of the Crusades).
Was Jesus Matthew’s sword-slinging Old Testament warrior who came “not to
abolish but to complete” the Jewish Law and the prophets – “not come to bring
peace but a sword” – or the compassionate, forgiving messenger with the
revolutionary new understanding of love even for your enemies, and the
revolutionary new attitude of turning the other cheek we see at 5:39-48 (and
will see in Luke 6:29)?
Was Jesus just another O.T. prophet or a new voice
who risked (and lost) his life by challenging his own violent religion in order
to bring us a new message. The man who was not afraid to contradict the old
scriptures: “you have heard it said… but I
say unto you…”?
This is the big question that, because of all the
contradictions, confusions and hidden agendas we will see in the Gospels, we will
have to answer for ourselves. And I suspect the answers will not define Jesus,
but our self.
On matters of less consequence Matthew’s list of
disciples is different. A small point but the “Word of God” can only be right –
not more or less right than the other words of God. After all, it is still the
word of God in the other Gospels as well. And either Matthew or Jesus can’t
count when Matthew has Jesus say:
“ ‘Jonah
was in the sea-monster’s belly for three days and three nights, and in the same
way the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the bowels of the
earth.’ ” (12:40).
Every account of Jesus’ burial (even Matthew’s) has
Jesus 2 nights in “the bowels of the earth” (we won’t quibble about the three
days because he was interred for parts of three). Only small, but another point
of fact. If Matthew and other Gospellers’ facts are wrong, then what about
their opinions?
And there are some mysterious bits which are intriguing.
Matthew has Jesus saying:
“ ‘Ever
since the coming of John the Baptist the
Violent men taking over heaven? How did they get in
to Heaven when entire towns and cities are being thrown into hell just for not
listening to disciples?
In Matthew we also find Jesus’ mistaken belief and
public statements about the imminence of the coming of God to reign over Earth:
“ ‘I
tell you this; there are some standing here who will not taste death before
they have seen the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.’ ” (16:28)
And:
“ ‘I
tell you this; the present generation will live to see it all.’ ” (24:34)
Did Jesus really say this, or was it Matthew’s
mistake? The predicted event of the coming of God did not take place. It is a
problem for the argument that the Bible is the infallible word of an omniscient
God. The imminence of the advent of the second coming is a perpetual mistake
throughout the New Testament. But the imminent second coming, and the eternal
life for believers it ushered in, was a big selling point. Through this promise
of eternal salvation/survival the religion that was formed in Jesus’ name was
able to eventually dominate the Mediterranean world, and beyond.
Matthew also ascribes a strange and wilful petulance to
Jesus against an innocent fig tree :
“Next
morning on his way to the city he felt hungry; and seeing a fig tree at the
roadside he went up to it, but found nothing on it but leaves. He said to the
tree, ‘You shall never bear fruit any more!’; and the tree withered away at
once.” (21:18-20).
Would the loving Jesus we meet in other places make
one of his last acts on Earth a wilful act against an innocent tree – an act
more akin to the petulance of the son of Zeus rather than the son of God?
Also, during his Passion narrative Matthew has an
amazing story of premature bodily resurrection for God’s followers – a startling
event, apparently unknown to the other Gospel writers because they don’t
recount it in their Gospels:
“There
was an earthquake, the rocks split and the graves opened, and many people arose
from sleep; and coming out of their graves after his resurrection they entered
the
Hardly a small, inconsequential happening! I should
think it would have been sufficient to convert
The important accounts of the happenings at
So we are left wondering what is the truth, what
actually happened? The Bible, even in the New Testament, is contradictory,
inconsistent – hardly what you would expect of the inerrant word of God – more
like the very human, errant word of man. We have to decide which parts are true
for ourselves – the entirety cannot be the truth – despite the semantic
gymnastics of the evangelicals.
Despite the unreliability of the Bible, a hint of a
different, special man starts to emerge. The parts of Matthew’s Jesus story
which are most likely to be reliable are the parts which would have been
difficult for Matthew to invent – because they tell of a wisdom beyond that
which Matthew shows us as his own – and they show us a man who was larger than
Matthew shows himself to be. We will look at this man more closely when we
finish examining the Gospels.
MARK (About 70 A.D.)
Mark is, by the consensus of Bible scholars, the
first Gospel to be written and Matthew was 90% copied from it. Mark’s main
agenda as a gospeller, like that of Matthew, seems to be tying Jesus to the old
Jewish scriptures in order to convert the Jews to the Jesus movement. Mark’s
story opens with Isaiah, later Elijah gets a starring role, and Moses a cameo
(9:4-13).
Mark has his own slant on the “facts”. His list of
disciples is different to both Matthews and Luke’s. Again, you would think that
God could get them right seeing as how “He” wrote the other Gospels as well? Mark
does not have Peter walking on water as a test of faith as Matthew does. But they
do manage to agree on the recounting of Jesus’ mistaken belief that the coming
of God was imminent :
“ ‘I
tell you this: there are some of those standing here who will not taste death
before they have seen the kingdom of God already come into power.’ ” (9:1)
And:
“I
tell you this: the present generation will live to see it all.’ ” (13:30).
So, they always agree when Jesus is mistaken!? Once
again the question is begged: who made the mistake: Jesus, Mark, Matthew –
maybe God? Whoever got it wrong the Bible is unreliable. That generation did
not “live to see it all”. We still await the “
Mark also agrees with Matthew that Jesus was only
concerned with his own people (“I was
sent only to the lost sheep of
“The
woman was a Greek, born in Syrian
‘Yes,
Lord,’ she replied, ‘but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s
crumbs.’
Then
he told her, ‘For such a reply, you may go, the demon has left your daughter.’ ” (7:26-29)
As Mark tells it Jesus himself saw that his mission was
only for “the children” (of
Mark also engages in hell-casting and teeth-gnashing
but thankfully not as much as Matthew. He does reiterate the story of Jesus
petulantly withering the fig tree for not producing fruit on demand and even
makes the story a greater indictment of Jesus’ alleged petulance because he
tells us that :
“for
it was not the season for figs.” (11:14)
Would God curse a tree to death for being without
fruit out of season? So either the Bible is wrong or Jesus was less than Divine.
Either way doctrine is in trouble.
Mark, like Matthew, does occasionally allow us
glimpses of a man of great wisdom :
“ ‘I
tell you then, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received
it and it will be yours.’ ” (11:24)
And of great love:
“ ‘love
your neighbour as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than
these.’ ” (12:30-32)
Mark’s story of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection
is different to the other synoptic (supposedly telling the same story) Gospels
– Matthew and Luke. Mark’s version of Jesus’ behaviour before the crucifixion
is particularly opposed to Luke’s – Mark has it that Jesus was in anguish
bordering on despair in the
“he
began to be deeply distressed and troubled. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow
to the point of death” (Mark 14:33-34).
Luke has a totally different version, showing Jesus
to be at peace in the face of death – he even omits the part where Jesus asks
for the bitter cup to be taken from him that Mark includes (Mark 14:35-36).
Mark’s account of Jesus’ crucifixion is also vastly different in Luke. Mark has
Jesus silent throughout his walk to the place of execution and his crucifixion
– except at the end when he cries out in his anger and his pain:
“My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” (Mark 15:34).
Mark’s Jesus is a much more human one – like us – he
is able to feel fear, despair, anger and pain. Jesus even seems to have expected
the coming of God before his death – and calls out in very human frustration
when he finally realises it is not to be so. On the other hand, as we shall
see, Luke was writing at a time when Jesus was being made out to be the Trinity
– Father, Son and Holy Ghost – not human like us. We will see how different
Luke’s story of the crucifixion is from Mark’s in a moment.
But both purport to recount facts, and both are held
out by many to be the word of God. In Mark, as everywhere else in the Bible,
there are contradictions which leave it unreliable as fact.
LUKE (About 90 A.D.)
Luke begins his gospel, uniquely, with the story of
the birth of John the Baptist to Zechariah and Elizabeth. Luke’s attempt to tie
Jesus to
Luke goes on to tell us a different story about the
birth of Jesus – the story of the shepherds (for Matthew it was Magi and gifts
of gold and incense – Mark mentions neither). And Jesus, according to Luke, was
circumcised to “purify” him (why does the son of God, indeed God himself need
purification?). This was obviously a pro-Jewish gesture and an effort to take a
doctrinal position on the important Jewish act of circumcision. Paul’s letters
(which precede the Gospels in date) are concerned in many places with the
to-circumcise-or-not debate.
Two turtle doves were then killed and offered to God.
So here we are, in the New Testament, and we are still very much dealing with
the old tribal, Jewish Jehovah who needed blood-sacrifice.
The genealogy of Joseph as spelled out by Luke is
different from that of Matthew. Luke counts Joseph’s descent from King David
through forty-one generations, whereas Matthew can only find twenty-eight – not
even close. Very few of the names overlap and Luke manages to trace Joseph all
the way back to Adam! But again it is irrelevant because Jesus is not related
to Joseph through the flesh because Jesus was virgin-born.
Luke has other stories that are unique – such as the
townsfolk of
“Therefore,
I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown
great love. But the one of whom little is forgiven, loves little. [Luke 7:47]
As we will see, John has the story different again – and
the lesson different as well. The question which comes to you time and again
when reading the contradictory Bible is: if the “truth will set you free”, what
is the truth? Whose truth are we dealing with here – Mark and Matthews’,
Luke’s, John’s, or Jesus’?
When we get to Jesus’ teachings about love and
forgiveness, turning the other cheek, treating others as you would like them to
treat you, loving your enemies we begin to get some broad agreement between the
Gospels – maybe these are the real teachings of Jesus – the Truth which will
set us free?
There is broad agreement also about Jesus’ mistake about
the imminence of the coming of God :
“ ‘And
I tell you this: there are some of those standing here who will not taste death
before they have seen the
“ ‘Yet be sure of this: The
Jesus apparently preached that the coming of the Lord
was imminent, and you could be sure that by the time the Gospel of Luke was
written (circa 90 A.D.) the non-occurrence of this event had been thrown back
into the faces of the Jesus movement. The author of Luke makes an attempt to
address this – thus :
“ Once,
having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus
replied, ‘The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor
will people say, “Here it is” or, “There it is” , because the kingdom of God is
within you.” (17:20-21)
And there is broad agreement across the Gospels about
Jesus’ supposed intolerance, violent anger and ability to hate:- Korazin,
“ ‘Woe
to you Korazin! Woe to you
So much for Jesus’ injunction to turn the other
cheek? Or have the Gospellers made this up to scare their fellow Jews into
following them? The continual sub-text of the Gospels is the conversion of
others through fear – much like it is in the Old Testament:
“ See the Lord is coming with fire,
And his chariots are like a whirlwind;
He will bring down his anger with fury,
And he will rebuke with flames of fire.
For with fire and with his sword
The Lord will execute judgement upon all men,
And many will be those slain by the Lord.”
Isaih (66:15-16)
Luke has Jesus appointing another seventy-two
disciples (10:1) – an important point that you would have thought Matthew and
Mark would have known. There was much dispute in the Jesus movement (we can see
it starting in Paul’s letters) as to who in the movement had apostolic
authority, maybe Luke added these extra names to push the claims of the members
of a certain faction? So many maybes.
Luke gives us a huge departure from the preceding
Gospels about what happened In the Garden of Gethsemane on the night before
Jesus’ execution. Luke portrays a Jesus much more Divine and resigned to his
fate than the despair found in the earlier Gospels of Matthew and Mark :
“Father,
if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.”
(22:42)
Luke’s account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate also differs
widely from Matthew and Mark. Luke has Jesus examined before both Pilate and
Herod – Herod just happening to be in
“ ‘Father,
forgive them; they do not know what they are doing.’ ” (23:34)
I’ve got to say that, personally, I find these last
are magnificent words. For me Jesus was all about love, forgiveness and doing
unto others. That a man could forgive those who were torturing him to death is
magnificent, and an example of what forgiveness could mean – for the rest of us
to follow. But, comparing Luke to Matthew and Mark, Luke is striving to make
Jesus out to be Divine to suit the evolving doctrine of his era – and I suspect
that my desire to believe these words to be true is more likely my “t” truth
than the “T” Truth.
Luke also records Jesus’ final words as different from
the very human, despairing words recorded in the earlier Gospels of Matthew and
Mark (“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”). Instead Luke records Jesus
as saying:
“ ‘
Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.’
” (23:46)
A much more divine and much less angry, human end –
looking for all the world like embellishment.
Why does Luke change both the stories of Gethsemane
and
Jesus had to be portrayed as going willingly to his
death, rather than the despair in
How the logic of salvation works is problematical –
the killing of Jesus was just another human crime of religion – likely to
compound our sins in the eyes of any real God, rather than save us from them.
But salvation doctrine enabled Christian House of God theologians to tie Jesus
in with the Jewish scriptural understanding of our original sin – we are all descendants
of Adam, who chose knowledge over faith – always a very bad choice as far as
religion was concerned. All doctrine, to be accepted, had to be securely tied
to the Jewish scriptures – accepted by all as the word of God – “scriptural
authority” was all important. In this way the “New” Testament was dominated by
the Old.
And also in this way Jesus’ important message of love
and forgiveness was relegated to an inferior position as compared to doctrine.
Luke’s account of the resurrection also differs
substantially – two angels at the empty tomb instead of one, Mary and Joanna’s
meeting with Jesus on the journey to Emmaus, Joanna instead of Salome at the
tomb and three women rather than Matthew’s two (just the two Marys), the eleven
disciples’ meeting with Jesus in Jerusalem instead of Galilee. These are
portrayed as facts – if the Gospels can’t agree on facts they can’t be factual.
JOHN (About 90 A.D.)
John’s Gospel is different from the other three – he
never has Jesus tell a parable or cast out demons, but he has him indulge in
long discourses and do plenty of “signs” to prove his identity.
John also has some unique stories of Jesus. Firstly
the story of water into wine at a wedding he is attending with his family is
unique to John. John also uniquely has a story of Jesus walking with his
mother, brothers and disciples together to
“When
his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said,
‘He’s out of his mind’. “ – (Mark 3:21).
And they came to take him home. Maybe John felt it
was important to change the idea suggested in the other Gospels that Jesus’
ideas were not accepted by his own family? You can imagine the retorts: “why
should we follow your man – he was rejected by his own family?”
John is one of the later Gospels and, like Luke (both
about 90 A.D. according to non-theologically driven biblical scholars), it was
written after anybody who knew Jesus first-hand was dead. Both John and Luke
had a freer hand than Matthew and Mark and there appears to be plenty of spin
going on for “H” House-building purposes? But John seems less concerned about populating
the new House with Jews, and seems more interested in the wider, non-Jewish
population. He makes no attempt to trace Jesus back to David or locate Jesus’
birth to
“ ‘
And:
“How
can the Christ come from Galillee? Does not the Scripture say that the Christ
will come from David’s family, and from
And:
“Look into it, and you will find that a
prophet does not come out of Galillee.” (8:52)
John has a unique slant on the anointing of Jesus’
feet with perfume from all the other gospellers. John has it take place after another
unique story of the raising of Lazarus, and done by Mary – one of Lazarus’ sisters
– not by the sinful woman (prostitute) of the other gospellers. The lesson from
the anointing is different to Luke but similar to Mark and Matthew – that it
was in preparation to Jesus’ death and burial, and that we will always have the
poor with us (to whom the money for the perfume could have been given) but we
will not always have Jesus.
John (like Luke) concentrates on making Jesus out to
be more Divine,than human, changing the very human words given to Jesus in Matthew
and Mark’s Gospels. In the
“ ‘what
am I to say? Father save me from this hour. No, it was for this that I came to
this hour.’” (12:27).
And :
“ ‘This
is the cup my Father has given me; shall I not drink it?’” (18:11)
Contrast this with the very human despair in Mark
(the first Gospel written – circa 70 AD) and Matthew (c. 85 AD and copied 90%
from Mark). In this polishing up of Jesus, John copies the spin of his fellow later-Gospeller,
Luke (c. 90 AD). John, also like Luke, has Jesus saying much more divine words
in his pain on the cross than the very human, angry accusation of having been
forsaken by God as depicted in Matthew and Mark:
“ ‘It
is accomplished!’ ” (19:30)
Embellishment? Someone has the final hours of Jesus’
life – and his final words – wrong, either Matthew and Mark or Luke and John? Why?
John, like Luke, appears to be trying to combat any
idea that the execution of Jesus could be represented as a defeat and proof
that Jesus was not God. John perhaps was also building up Jesus’ Divinity to
support the doctrine of the Trinity – as the followers of Christ bolstered
their ad hoc movement and formed it up into an “H” House with doctrine.
For whatever agenda, we have clear differences of
fact in the Gospels – in the inerrant word of God. Which Gospel(s) are an
honest record of Jesus’ deeds and words, and which an attempt to build doctrine
for the evolving Christian “H” House?
John’s story differs from the other Gospels in other
particulars as well. Jesus turns out the dealers and money-changers from the
temple very early in his career. John has Jesus carrying his own cross to
These, again, are not differences of opinion or
interpretation but differences of fact – some, indeed, are faith-altering points
of difference – especially in the cross, tomb and resurrection stories. Even
Jesus’ very purpose in coming to us is different in John’s telling – not the
warrior king, come with a sword as Matthew has it: “ ‘you must not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have
not come to bring peace, but a sword.’ ” (10:34)
but the softer (and more palatable): “ ‘I have not come to judge the world, but to
save the world’ ” (John 12:47)
John’s writing is more accomplished and poetic, but
in trying to be mystical and spiritual manages to be obscure. John has Jesus
talk of a mysterious “Advocate” who is to come after him, a “Spirit of truth”
who will :
“ ‘guide
you into all the truth.’ ” (15:26-27 & 16:7-15).
Sounds a bit like John is referring to Paul? Maybe an
attempt to give authority to Pauline doctrine?
John also, uniquely, introduces a mysterious
“favourite” of Jesus : (19:26 & 13:23) – but leaves us in suspense as to
who it is – maybe implying at the end that it is John himself? The mystery leaves
Jesus with an almost homosexual flavour because of the easy physical
familiarity he has with his “favourite” (revealed in John’s depiction of the
last supper scene) and in the special, loving attitude of Jesus to his
favourite described at the end of John :
“Peter
looked round, and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following – the one who at
supper had leaned back close to him to ask the question, ‘Lord, who is it that
will betray you?’ When he caught sight of him, Peter asked, ‘Lord, what will
happen to him?’
Jesus
answered, ‘If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is it to you?’ ” (21:20-22).
So a mysterious favourite – what’s going on? And,
again, the mistaken belief of Jesus as related in all the Gospels that he would
be returning within the lifetimes of the present generations. He expects his
favourite to remain “alive until I return”. Either John or Jesus
made a mistake – or his favourite is still kicking around somewhere?
Jesus (from the cross) also commends his mother to
his favourite as her replacement son :
“When
Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he
said to his mother, ‘Dear woman, here is your son,’ and to the disciple, ‘Here
is your mother.’ From that time on, this
disciple took her into his home. “ (19:26-7)
How strangely different is that story!? And unique to
John – you would think that if it were true the other Gospellers would have
picked up on it? What barrow is John trying to push here?
John, throughout, has not so much Old Testament
hell-flinging and gnashing of teeth (as especially Matthew for example). John does
emphasise Jesus’ message of love and his commandment to love one another : (13:
34-35 & 15:9-13 & 15:17). And we get glimpses of Jesus’ unnatural
wisdom:
“ ‘That
one of you who is faultless shall throw the first stone’ ” (7:53-7).
And some examples of Jesus’ wisdom unique to John:
“ ‘Know
the truth and it shall set you free’ ” (8:32)
John sometimes has Jesus offering us a grander vision
altogether of what we humans are capable of – even of our own Divinity.
“Have I not said ye are Gods?” (82:6)
Instead of being “miserable sinners”, marked by our
original sin (that didn’t actually occur, except in the mythical Genesis) and being
thereby doomed (unless we get the intervention of a Church – who, funny to
relate, invented the doctrine), John’s Jesus allows us to lifts our sights
higher altogether – to contemplate the Divine nature of our spiritual beings. And
to approach the sublime that humans can illustrate by their sometime
magnificent behaviour, rather than the often illustrated “failings” of our
animal bodies and egos. To envisage what might be achievable by humanity if we
thought more highly of our Selves as spiritual beings rather than concentrate
on the miserable sins of our bodies – always dancing on the brink of hell. and what
we might achieve.
To be fair, the “ye are Gods” quote did originate in
the Jewish scriptures (Psalms 82:6) – one of the gems rewarding any who may
care to mine among the blood-soaked dross of the Old Testament.
Here endeth the Gospels.
THE GOSPELS AS A WHOLE
While the Gospels are fresh in our minds this is a
good opportunity to consider the Gospels as a whole.
At the beginning of this exploration of the New
Testament I said that Jesus was the most remarkable man in human history, and
that anybody searching for any special meaning in life needed to have knowledge
of him – and his special message for humanity. But how to get that “knowledge”?
THE HUNT FOR THE REAL JESUS
Many people regard the New Testament, especially, as
“surely the words of God”. But are they the “gospel truth” – do they introduce
us to the real Jesus, or did the gospellers have other fish to fry. Were they,
as we got glimpses of above, more interested in parcelling him up for marketing
to the people of Israel in the earlier Gospels of Mark and Matthew – and then
when that wasn’t successful, to the people of the wider Roman Empire in the later
Gospels of Luke and John? Who was Jesus, and what were his real words and
actions? Unfortunately there are many barriers between us and the real Jesus.
THE BARRIERS AND FILTERS BETWEEN US AND THE REAL
JESUS
Because Jesus was either illiterate or he chose not
to write, what he had to say comes to us not from his own hand but from others.
“Unfortunately” because it inserts people between Jesus and us – people with
varying competencies and various motives. These abilities and motives form
substantial filters. I have been able to several ones – to do with the
mechanics of the process of writing about someone from anecdotal evidence long
after his death, and some filters to do with motives :
The first filter is the considerable length of time
Jesus’ words and actions were carried in the oral form before they were
committed to writing by the Gospellers. Scholastic consensus has it that the
gospels were written long after Jesus was executed – between 40 years (Mark)
and 60 years (John & Luke) – at the shortest.
Another filter is the journalistic process itself.
The gospels are journalism – the writing down of witnesses’ accounts. Those who
have had any experience of journalism will tell you how bad it is at getting
down events and words – even first-hand and one day old – let alone from
witnesses long dead.
A filter in the process of writing the New Testament
was the need for translations. Jesus’ words, for instance, were translated from
his original Aramaic language into Greek – the language of the earliest complete
Gospels we have – from which our modern Bibles were produced. Then they were
translated into whatever language in which we are now reading the Bible (often
through other languages on the way, like Latin, for example). There are many
differences in the various editions of the Bible produced over the years caused
by disputes over translations.
Another filter was the hand-copying process before
the invention of the printing press gave us identical copies. The oldest complete
copy of the Gospels we have dates from the fourth century – some incomplete
fragments date apparently back to the second century (Margaret Davies, The Oxford History of the Bible – P.
50). The earliest complete Gospels that we have were copied by hand with all
the errors that lengthy process of transcription produced. The scribes doing
the first copying were most often barely literate members of congregations,
rather than trained and professional scribes as they were in later years.
And there were filters of motives. The copyists were often
members of various factions (of which there were plenty in the early Jesus
movement before
Another filter of motives was the motives
of the original Gospellers themselves. These were motives associated with
proselytizing the Jewish population of
The Gospellers also belonged to various
factions of the emerging Christian movement and had motives to do with pushing
their diverging ideas. These were motives which made them write yet another
version of the Gospel in the first place – after the first (Mark) existed, why
write another one? Obviously, to change perceived mistakes and/or to push new
ideas. The Gospels as a result have some quite significant differences on
sometimes major points.
Much later another filter between the real
Jesus and us emerged – the final compilation process of choosing the Gospels
acceptable to the Church authorities from the many more than the four which originally
existed. Some of the rejected Gospels had extra and different stories to tell of
Jesus – as recently as the middle of the 20th century the Gospel
according to Thomas was discovered in Egypt and many feel that it has at least
as much authenticity and apostolic authority as the other four gospels accepted
back in the 5th century.
We need to look more closely at the filter
that was the copying process – an especially substantial one .
THE COPYING PROCESS.
The present Bible is a copy of a copy of a
copy of a translation of a memory of words. The New Testament I have in my hand
is one of several English translations of a copy of a copy of a copy of a Greek
translation of someone’s fallible memory of Jesus’ original Aramaic words.
This from biblical scholar Bart Ehrman:
“We
don’t even have copies of copies of the originals [Gospels], or even copies of copies of copies of the
originals. What we have are copies made later – much later. In most instances,
they are copies made centuries later. And
these copies all differ from one another in many thousands of places.”
- (Misquoting Jesus, P. 10)
We need to look also more closely at what was perhaps
the biggest filter between the real Jesus and us – and perhaps the biggest
filter between the House of God and the average, educated person in the street.
THE FILTER THAT WAS DOCTRINE
Paul and other doctrinaires found it necessary to
work up doctrine to explain how the high priests were able to have Jesus, the
Messiah and the son of God, executed like a common criminal by the Romans. The
doctrine of salvation has developed to explain this problem away – Jesus’
willingly went to his death when he could have called upon a host of angels to
save himself if he had wanted. His willing sacrifice saved us from our sins.
To suit this doctrine the later Gospels were written
to change the stories of what happened in the
THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
It’s also hard to know whether the real Jesus saw
himself as the only begotten Son of God – and the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy
Ghost? Later, the divinity of Jesus became important doctrine – worked up into
the House of God’s doctrine of the “T” Trinity by the Church fathers. There was
much dispute about this doctrine – chief among them being the Arian dispute
(named after 4th century AD presbyter of
“by
summoning the first universal Council of the Church, which was held between 20
May and 19 June 325 at Nicea (modern Iznik) with some 300 bishops taking part.
The proceedings were opened by the Emperor himself, and it was he who proposed
the insertion into the draft statement of belief of the key word homoousios
– meaning consubstantial, ‘of one
substance’ – to describe the relation of the Son to the Father. Its inclusion
was almost tantamount to a condemnation of Arianism, and such were the
Emperor’s powers of persuation that by the close of the conference only
seventeen of the assembled bishops maintained their opposition – a number that
the threat of exile and possible excommunication subsequently reduced to two.”
-
“The
THE MESSIANIC DOCTRINE
The Jesus movement developed the doctrine that Jesus
was the Jewish Messiah – come to lead his people against their oppressors – as
mentioned in the Hebrew scripture. Because Micah in the Old Testament said the
Messiah when he came would be born in
“Well
after Jesus’ death, when Messianic thinking began to swirl around him, his
memory was wrapped in these traditions. Jesus’ birthplace in
-
“Jesus
for the Non-Religious” (P. 20)
The Messiah was depicted in
the Old Testament as restoring the fortunes of
DOCTRINE CHANGED TO SUIT THE TARGET AUDIENCE
The Jesus movement, after the Jews were crushed by
the Romans had more luck spreading their inchoate religion into other parts of
the Mediterranean world. The words of Jesus, especially the promise of another,
more just, life in
A RIDDLE WRAPPED IN AN
ENIGMA?
So, as the Gospels describe him, Jesus was a
contradiction – a riddle wrapped in an enigma. Unfortunately the far-from-objective
Bible is the only source material (apart from the controversial Gospel of
Thomas) we have about Jesus. This is because Jesus left no writings of his own
and did not show up on the radar of conventional history except for a small
blip (which is also seemingly the subject of religious editing) in Josephus,
and a smaller (uncomplimentary) one about his followers in Tacitus (Annals 15.44).
The Gospels are so discrepant that everyone can find
a Jesus to suit their purpose. You can find a Jesus who was only concerned for
the people of
“Looking
back and reading these texts after 2,000 years, we may regret certain of their
features: we may regret their anti-Judaism, the insistence in some of them on
the subordination of women to men, and the acceptance of the institution of
slavery by some of them. Moreover the process of defining the New Testament
seems to have expressed desires to exclude what some literate males disliked.
Of even greater regret are the terrible cruelties perpetrated over the
centuries by Christians who have appealed to these features for justification
of their deeds.”
-
(Margaret Davies, Op. Cit, P. 57)
So, finding the true Jesus in the only place he has
been recorded is very difficult and pretty much up to the individual. What you
find often tells more about your self than Jesus. But through the doctrinaire embellishment
and House-building in the chosen Gospels comes a hint of a very special man – a
man living in a brutal time who was wise beyond his fellows and who had a
revolutionary idea of the primacy of love and forgiveness over hate and revenge
– of the possibility of love even for your enemies. A man who was a bit of a
rebel, who threatened the entrenched power of the House of God of the day until
they had him dispatched. A spiritual man who could be best described as an
anti-theist. The dominant theism of the day recognised Jesus’ anti-theism and insisted
on his execution by the Romans.
WINNOWING THE NEW MESSAGE FROM THE OLD
Because the Gospels come
first in the Bible it’s easy to overlook the fact that they were written after
Paul’s letters. One of the reasons that the Gospels were written was obviously
to settle disputes surrounding the doctrines developing in the Jesus movement.
These disputes are mentioned in Paul’s letters – for example, the continuing
controversy over circumcision. I argue that those parts of the Gospels which aren’t
obviously aimed at supporting and developing Pauline doctrine are less likely
to be embellishments.
The wisdom of Jesus often
shines through the murk of the Gospels – those words ascribed to Jesus which contain
more wisdom than the Gospel-writers and the fallible Paul show themselves
capable of (by the rest of their work) are more likely to be true. Some of
Jesus’ words also ring true because they carry universal Truths – equally true
for us today. “T” Truths, because they can be seen as not just my “t” truth or
your truth but because they work infallibly – to make for a happy and
successful life. Truths like love one another, forgive even your enemies, do
unto others – they are the “T” Truth under my definition of it – true for everybody,
all the time.
Jesus was also definitely a
radical – that is why he caused such a stir, why we are still talking about him
today, why they had to kill him in the end – so radical ideas are more likely
to be Jesus’ as, conversely, old ideas from the old scriptures are more likely
to have been placed in Jesus’ mouth to give him scriptural authority. Jesus stood
out from all the other preachers and prophets of the day because he was not
same-old, same-old. Continually we hear him say: “you have heard it said……but I
say unto you ……”
THE REAL JESUS
So, after considering the
barriers and filters between us and Jesus, where are we now in the hunt for the
real Jesus? Let’s start at the very beginning of what we can know about Jesus –
because he created scarcely a ripple in genuine history, some skeptics doubt he
even existed.
1. Jesus existed.
·
Because the
early Jesus movement would not have invented a character then gone out and died
brutal deaths for that invention – people don’t “die for a lie”.
·
Because Jesus
was a much more radical and bigger character than the people who wrote about
him – beyond their capacity to invent.
·
Because you
can’t invent a message you can’t comprehend. Jesus was on another level, as we
shall see – the disciples and later doctrinaires didn’t, and still don’t, quite
understand him.
2. Jesus was very human. The following stories from the
Gospels are unlikely to be inventions or embellishment because they do not help
later developing doctrine. They show he had human fears and weaknesses, and some
show he could even make mistakes :
·
In the garden of
·
On the cross
Jesus cried out in his anger and his pain : “My God, my God, why have you abandoned
me?” (Mark and Matthew). More real than the later, theologically tidied up,
doctrinally inspired versions of Luke: “Father
into your hands I entrust my spirit”; and: “It is accomplished” of John.
·
Jesus frequently
showed very human annoyance at the slow wits and personal flaws of the
disciples and others around him.
·
Jesus’ mother
and family thought he was absolutely human – they came to retrieve him because
he was causing them embarrassment and concern, they even feared he was insane
(Mark 3:21). Why would the original Gospeller, Mark, invent this?
·
Jesus made
mistakes – he thought, and repeatedly stated, that the coming of God was near –
within the lifetimes of some of those present. Hardly the sort of mistake a
Divinity would make. As we have seen, Luke tried to tidy this up later.
3. Jesus
was preternaturally wise. The following anecdotes, I argue, are true because, again, ordinary people (as the
Gospellers and the letter writers like Paul continually show themselves to be)
can’t invent extraordinary wisdom. The first two examples of his wisdom were
even keener because they were delivered under pressure in potentially dangerous
situations for Jesus :
·
“Give unto
Caesar what belongs to Caesar” – when asked if Israelites should pay tax to
·
“Let he who is
without sin cast the first stone” – delivered when the crowd wanted to stone an
adulteress – to try to prevent it was very dangerous because it had divine blessing
from the O.T. The crowd melted away.
·
“It is not the
healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” (when asked why he ate with tax
collectors and sinners.)
·
“It is easier
for a camel to go through the eye of a needle fully laden than a rich man to
heaven”.
·
“What does it
profit a man to gain the whole world but forfeit his own soul?”
·
We should not
judge others : “You see the sliver in your neighbour’s eye but not the plank in
your own.”
·
“Enter by the
narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to
destruction, and many take it.”
·
“You will know
them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?”
·
“Then you will
know the truth and the truth will set you free.”
4. Jesus was revolutionary –
he brought a revolution in the idea of the primacy of love over Old Testament
revenge and “justice”. These quotes are beyond the ability of the Gospellers,
schooled in the Old Testament ideas of “an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth”
to invent :
·
“You have heard it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour [Leviticus
19:18] and hate your enemy’. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray
for those who persecute you … for he [God] makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the
just and the unjust.” (Matt.5:43-48).
·
“You have heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ [Exodus
& Deuteronomy]. But I say to you, do
not resist one who is evil. But if any one strike you on the right cheek, turn
to him the other also; and if any one would sue you and take your coat, let him
have your cloak as well; and is any one forces you to go one mile, go with him
two miles.” (Matt. 5:38-42)
·
“So whatever you wish that men would do to
you, do so to them.” (Matt. 7:12) Here Jesus was ahead of the curve because
the old scriptures only stated that you should not do what you don’t
want done to you. (Apocrypha-Tobit 4:15). Wouldn’t the world be a better place
if we did good things rather than just refraining from bad? As the
Bhagavad-Gita has it : “Nobody can become
perfect by merely ceasing to act.”
6. Jesus was charismatic:
·
He always drew a
crowd in a time when there were plenty of preachers.
·
He drew
disciples who gave up their livelihoods to live a hard, hand-to-mouth existence
with him.
·
The memory of
him after his death drew devotees to the Jesus movement at great risk to
themselves.
·
His following was
built in only a few months (not much more than a year by all accounts) of
public ministry.
7. Jesus was the bearer of
Truths. “T” Truths because they apply to us all, they would pave an undeniable
path to human happiness on Earth. His own Trinity:
·
Love one another.
·
Forgive, even
our enemies.
·
Do unto others
that which you would have them do unto you.
8.
Jesus was not religious.
·
Jesus irreligiously
worked on the Sabbath – saying : the “Sabbath
was made for man, not man for the Sabbath”.
·
Jesus countermanded
the Scriptures: “You have heard it said …
but I say … “
·
Jesus stopped the
religious stoning of the adulteress.
·
Jesus ignored
the Old Testamentary declaration that women are made unclean by menstrual
discharges.
·
Jesus overturned
the money tables in the
·
Jesus threatened
the established power of religion by giving new and different sermons to the
people.
Jesus,
while not an atheist, was anti-theist. In retaliation religion killed Jesus –
not “the Jews” or the Romans.
So, in Jesus we have a human
being who definitely existed. We have a special person who was: wise, loving,
spiritual, brave, charismatic – all preternaturally so – with a revolutionary
understanding of what it could mean to be human. We have a person who was a
bearer of Truths for us all. We have a person who was not blindly religious, a
person who said that we should look into our hearts for what was right and
wrong instead of faithfully following a religion whose rights and wrongs were
prescribed in ancient, brutal scriptures. We should not stone the adulteress as
the Bible says because who among us is free of sin? Humanity should “Love one
another; Forgive even our enemies; and Do unto others”.
In Jesus we have a person
who was, not only way ahead of his time, but ahead of most of his followers
still. He was not pious, and sanctimonious but we was spiritual. Being spiritual
is not something many of his followers can ever claim because most of them are
interested in more Darwinian outcomes – physical survival as found in the doctrines
of resurrection and salvation – than in spiritual evolution.
How about the crux stories of
the House of God? Those stories about Jesus that many people regard as
essential to their faith in the meaning of life and in understanding its
purpose?
THE MIRACLE STORIES
The Gospels have many
stories of miracles supposedly carried out by Jesus. But how reliable are they?
We can never know at this distance, but because they are so very helpful in the
proselytizing crusade the Gospellers were on they are also very likely to be
embellished. If Jesus did miracles in front of large numbers of people (as it
is related he was prepared to: the loaves and fishes and raising Lazarus being two
examples) to achieve his stated mission of readying his fellow Jewish countrymen
for the coming of God, why would he not do conclusive miracles in front of the entire
congregation in the Jerusalem temple? Jesus repeatedly stated that he saw his
mission to be getting his Jewish countrymen ready for the coming of God – which
he believed to be imminent – no time to be lost. If Jesus were to do such a
miracle it would achieve his mission at a stroke. I believe the evidence shows
that if Jesus could have performed such miracles, he would have.
But the truth or otherwise of
the miracle stories are not the crux of Jesus’ importance. The crux was his revolutionary
idea of forgiveness in a country consumed with revenge (as it is today). His own
trinity of love, forgive, do unto others stands alone and does not need the
miracle stories to be true. This is universal Truth essential for us if we are
to survive as a species (consider that any judgement may be wrought upon us as
a species – not as individuals). To insist on miracles and other articles of
faith before you can receive Jesus’ wisdom as the Truth is a mistake.
How about that other crucial
story used to establish Jesus’ Divinity?
THE RESURRECTION
What can we know of the resurrection?
Something definitely happened after Jesus’ death
which served to turn his disciples (and his brother) into martyrs. Many
suffered brutal deaths in his name whereas previously they were afraid to own
him at the end. They were very human, continually ready to bicker about who
among them were the most important, and to backslide (the depiction of them as
such in the Gospels rings true and it’s hardly like to have been negatively
embellished). So what could have happened at this point in history to these
very ordinary followers of Jesus to galvanise them into heroes? Men who have
shown themselves to be very ordinary folk don’t march out into the world
heroically to suffer brutality and horrendous deaths when previously they were
afraid – without some sort of epiphany. They were not even game to show their
faces at Jesus’ trial and execution (a story of dereliction not likely to have
been invented because it leaves them in bad light).
The question of the reappearance of Jesus to the
disciples in some form is not so incredible – there are many very credible
ghost stories from some very reliable people. I have not had any ghostly
experiences myself but have had a couple of great ones told to me first hand by
credible and reliable people of good standing (who had nothing to gain in the
telling, but their own, valued credibility to lose). While, from the above arguments,
Jesus’ reappearance to the disciples could be held as true “on the balance of
probabilities” the higher standard of proof “beyond reasonable doubt” is not
available to us. The Gospels are our only source and unfortunately cannot be
regarded as a reliable witness on the matter because, once again – even
particularly here – at the stories of Jesus’ reappearance to his followers they
contradict each other on several points of fact as discussed earlier in my
examination of the Gospels.
The issue remains wide open to an open mind but, again,
similar to the miracle stories, the importance of Jesus for humanity does not
hang on the physical resurrection of Jesus – except for those people who only
believe in the importance of Jesus because of their Darwinian motive of animal
survival. The souls who shelter in the House of God because of the fear of
death have made resurrection pivotal – led by Paul who feels that Christian
faith has “nothing in it” (1 Cor.
15:13 & 16-17) if the physical resurrection of Jesus was not fact. The
House of God, by adopting Paul’s narrow vision of the importance of Jesus as
doctrine, is about the body rather than the spiritual, about Darwinian motives
– physical survival rather than spiritual evolution – the fear of death has brought
it most of its residents rather than any loftier spiritual inspiration. It is
on these grounds that atheism has successfully attacked Christianity and gained
many of its acolytes to its materialistic credo. This from the latest French, atheistic
flavour of the philosophical month – Michel Onfray:
“God,
manufactured by mortals in their own quintessential image, exists only to make
daily life bearable despite the path everyone of us treads towards extinction. As
long as men are obliged to die, some of them, unable to endure the prospect,
will concoct fond illusions.”
-
The Atheist Manifesto, (P. 13)
But is existence after death necessarily a “fond
illusion” just because the House of God exploits it to (try and) fill its pews?
I believe, and will argue from evidence in the essay Along the Road to Truth, that the human condition is to be a
spiritual being with an animal body. The fact that we, our spiritual selves, experience
life in an animal body once is hardly proof that it must never happen again. It
is only proof that the spiritual self can experience animal life on this
physical plane. If it can happen, it will. I will discuss this issue at greater
length later, suffice it here to say that Jesus may have come back to the
disciples, but there is much more to the story of Jesus than physical bodily
resurrection. He brought Truths which are crucial to our selves taking fully the
opportunity that life in an animal body on a physical plane offers –
opportunities of joy, of self-knowledge, and of spiritual growth.
Insistence on faith in incredible religious doctrine
in order to believe Jesus was important – insistence that there is nothing to
Jesus without it – defines only you, not Jesus or the Truth.
I argue in Essay 3 that the many mysteries, and the
many numinous experiences we will have in the course of a life, in a supposedly
mechanistic world, allows belief in a rational special meaning and ultimate
purpose of life greater than that found in the Bible-based House of God. Whatever
the truth of the resurrection and/or the miracle stories, special meaning and
ultimate purpose in life – even a rational belief in the existence of a Divine
– does not rely on them.
RELIGION KILLED JESUS – NOT
“THE JEWS”
How can an educated person
manage to believe that the fact the entrenched religion of the day killing
Jesus somehow “saved” us – that the importance of Jesus is that he died to
“wash away our sins”. You also have to believe that we are naturally sinful – “born
into sin”. You have to believe in Original Sin – a notion based in turn on a
belief in the veracity of the Garden of Eden story. Fear of the Old Testament
god – the brutal, jealous god of the primitive desert tribes is the only
explanation for such irrational beliefs.
Religion killed Jesus, not
“the Jews” or the Romans. Then the new religion that was spun around him set
about killing his message by burying it under bushels of incredible doctrine
like salvation. The House that was built, supposedly on Jesus, showed by its
subsequent barbaric acts, that it was not unlike the one that crucified him. How
much more would Western humanity have been capable of, how much better would our
history read if it had believed it was original love rather than original sin?
Would there have been the Crusades; slaughter in the recurrent, internecine European
religious wars; the Inquisition; slavery in the
THE TRUE MIRACLE OF JESUS
It can be confidently argued
that Jesus was the most important individual in Western History. And, because
of the West’s immense influence on the rest of the world, probably the most
important single individual in the history of humanity. This is not to deny the
“T” Truths and specialness of other individuals in the Western and other
cultures who have influenced the whole world and humanity. But Jesus was certainly very special, and this is
true, I argue, “beyond reasonable doubt”.
The calendar of the world came
eventually to be reset to the year of his birth – not bad for twelve month’s work in a minor,
subjugated country by a carpenter out of a hick town – from a standing start! And Jesus’ impression was made with ideas of
love and peace during a brutal period – Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero were
Jesus’ near neighbours in time. Things were not going well in his country –
The lasting and amazing
influence of his meek and mild ideas of loving even your enemies, turning the
other cheek after you have been struck, and doing unto others (not just
refraining from doing bad unto others) – conceived at such a time – are the
true miracles of Jesus.
The New Testament now comes to:
ACTS
Acts, located between the Gospels and the Pauline
letters in the New Testament of the Bible, is a fascinating story of a tribe
without its head. The story of a few brave men and women going out and putting
themselves in danger for the sake of a man and a message that inspired them. How
much truth is there in the story of these people as recorded in the book of
Acts? That the Jesus movement grew into a religion is a true story – and it did
it in the face of all the religions already on offer around the Mediterranean
world. It is true that it is quite a story about quite a man. A man who, though
apparently defeated – as demonstrated by his execution like a common criminal –
had such a true and powerful message that it remains with us today. The bravery
of Jesus’ early followers is also indubitable – it was not a safe world in
which to threaten state power and challenge the truth of established religions.
This book of the Bible is thought by many scholars to
have been written by the same author as the Gospel Luke. But there is a
transition from referring to Paul’s entourage as “they” to “we” in the two
times that a character called Timothy enters the story (16:1-6 & 20:5).
Also on the point of authorship Acts disagrees with Luke about the length of
time Jesus spends with the disciples after his resurrection – 40 days (1:3) cf.
Luke’s 1-2 days. The Bible has a habit of stating facts “differently” but if
Acts was written solely by the author of Luke then you would think it would
agree with his Gospel?
Who actually wrote Acts is of small consequence, but
the argument that the Bible is the “word of God” suffers again through the fact
that different parts tell the same story differently. The fate of Judas is also
different in Acts – his guts spill out after he falls on the “plot of land [bought] with the price of his villainy.” (1:18)
– in the Gospels he hangs himself.
Peter, quoted in Acts, does not see Jesus as the
Trinity – just a man. A special man, but not the “Father Son and Holy Ghost” –
the Trinity belongs to later House building doctrine.
“I
speak of Jesus of
Not a man who was God.
Whilst the broad story of the spirit, bravery and
inspiration of the early Jesus movement rings true in Acts, the process of
House-building is clear and it does render truth a casualty – weird things
happen to people who hold back their money from the Church : Ananias and his
wife drop dead just for not giving the Church all his money (5:1-6 & 7-10)
– that should have increased the takings from the next Sunday’s collection
plate!
Talking in tongues was all the go amongst the early
Christians in Acts (2:4-12) – they saw it as a sign that they were in the “last
days” (2:16). Fundamental Christians are still talking in tongues but the last
days have dragged out to over 2,000 years and counting.
The first Christian martyr mentioned was Stephen, who
was stoned to death by the established religion in
Is the story of Paul true?
Paul definitely existed (his letters are convincingly
real) and he was definitely a pillar of the Christian House of God as the Jesus
movement became. Needing an epiphany does not speak well of his own ability to
recognise the Truth in Jesus’ teachings of love. Epiphany or not, Paul was a
great creator of the doctrinal concrete which holds together much of the
eventual House of God that the Jesus movement became. Paul was undoubtedly
brave, but whether he was inspired by God, or not, has to be a personal
decision. For me his doctrinal ideas start the process of clouding Jesus’ simple
Truths that made the entire House of God incredible in time (and the idea of special
meaning in life along with it).
An important change in direction happens in Acts for
the early Christian movement when Peter has his vision of the sail-cloth filled
with various different animals lowered from heaven (10:15-16) – which he took
to mean that all people were acceptable to God, and that Jews could now mix
with unclean and uncircumcised types (10:28) – in order to convert them.
Previously the Gospels left us in no doubt that Jesus saw his mission as one of
saving only the Jews. But now :
“ ‘This
means that God has granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles also.’ ”
(Acts, 11:18).
This was, literally, a God-send for Christianity because
the Jews were proving difficult and dangerous to convert. It changed
Christianity from a Jewish sect into the world religion it eventually became. But
the disciples stay faithful to the difficult mission of trying to save the
Jews. James gets his head chopped off for his pains (12:2) and Peter arrested.
But resisting Christian conversion could be dangerous too and Herod gets struck
down by an angel of the Lord and “he was
eaten up with worms and died.” (12:23). The Bible remains the usual tangle
of fact and fantasy.
Paul voyages around Asia Minor and
Converting the Jews continues to be hot, hard and
dusty work and eventually leads to Paul’s undoing in Jerusalem when he is
arrested by the Romans to protect him from the Jews that he has enraged by
trying to convert them to the Jesus movement. He is able to avoid local
judgement, and most likely execution, because he is a Roman citizen. Paul is
sent as a prisoner in chains via a hazardous boat trip to
“we
want to hear what your views are, for we know that people everywhere are
talking against this sect.” (Acts 28:22)
So Paul quotes Isaiah to the Jews:
“You will be hearing but never understanding;
you will be ever
seeing but never perceiving.” (Isaiah 6:9)
And turns to the Gentiles for converts – as a last
resort:
“Therefore
I want you to know that God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they
will listen.” ( Acts 28:28).
The Book of Acts ends here telling us that Paul spends
another two years here “boldly and
without hinderance” preaching to all who listen. Whether Paul had Divine
insights or not, he was definitely brave and persistent.
WHAT ACTS REVEALS ABOUT THE REAL JESUS
The examination of the Gospels revealed evidence of the
embellishment of Jesus’ words and deeds for the purpose of proselytizing the
Jewish population. Acts shows us something of the need for this embellishment.
Acts describes how hard it was to make any headway spreading Jesus’ new
understandings – particularly against the established and dangerously zealous
religion of Judaism. In Acts we see that the new Christian movement was under
constant criticism and assault for having turned their backs on the law of
Moses and the words of the prophets recorded in the Old Testament. At
(21:21-40) Paul’s tribulations, in particular, show just how dangerous it was.
The followers of Jesus knew it was important that in telling Jesus’ story of
the new way they should be careful not to affront the old and its vested
interests. The closer Jesus was tied to the old Jewish scriptures and the Holy laws
and prophets therein, the safer the new movement could keep themselves – and
the more chance they had to win converts. One of the motivations for the creation
of the Gospels had to be the getting of this point across – because the
earliest Gospels clearly make the point, time and time again, that Jesus was
not come to destroy the Old:
“‘Do not suppose that I have come to abolish
the Law and the prophets; I did not come to abolish but to complete’ ”
(Matthew, 5:17)
It must be remembered Matthew wrote these supposed
words of Jesus after the events described in Acts and after Paul was building
his doctrine (detailed in his Letters). But the closer the Gospellers tied Jesus’
new understandings to the old “law and the prophets” the more diluted they
became. Jesus’ contradiction of the Gospels: “you have heard it said [an eye for an eye] but I say unto you [turn the other cheek]” gets softened by: “Do not suppose that I have come to abolish
the Law and the prophets”.
THE NEED FOR SOMETHING IN WRITING – THE GOSPELS
As well as troubles with the established Jewish
powers, Acts illustrates some of the disputes that were arising within the
members of the Jesus movement themselves. These disputes needed something authoritative
in writing to settle them – preferably something with “apostolic authority”.
Before the writing of the Gospels the Jesus story spread by word of mouth and
by personal letters like Paul’s. The longer this went on the more the risk that
the Jesus story would change – or lose its integrity. But by the time the story
of Jesus came to be written in the Gospels the process was already underway – as
illustrated by the differences and contradictions in the Gospels.
The four accepted Gospels were all written after
Paul’s doctrines in his letters and were influenced by them. Doctrine, in this
way, passed into the Gospels – and my thesis is that doctrine swamped the
message. Through the creation of doctrine the Jesus movement, which originally
was concerned with just meeting together to remember Jesus and keeping his
message of how to live, alive – became a Church – an “H” House of God. A period
when Jesus’ simple message of the primacy of love, forgiveness and doing unto
others became embellished by incredible doctrine – like how humanity’s
salvation from an original sin (left to us by the fictitious Adam) could only
be achieved by washing it away with Jesus’ blood. This doctrine was created to
serve the purpose of explaining how the son of God could be killed by mere
mortals – the doctrine of salvation enabled the defeat of the crucifixion to
seem like a victory.
The truth is simple, Jesus’ blood was spilled by
established religion because he threatened its interests. It is sadly ironic
that the story of religion killing Jesus became massaged into a religion itself
– a religion just as blood-thirsty as the one that killed him – a religion responsible,
in turn, for killing millions more. Religion is a vested and deadly business – and
it is the worst thing that ever happened to God – and to the Truth. Jesus
brought us no doctrine, only the message that love, forgiveness and doing unto
others was crucially important to any future humanity may have. Because we made
incredible doctrine more important to us than Jesus’ entirely credible message
is the reason why we are in such a religion-inspired mess today.
So, let’s look at Paul’s letters to see how this came
to be.
LETTERS
PAUL TO THE ROMANS:
Paul starts by trying to establish Jesus as of the
blood of David – essential if Messianic doctrine is to be accepted :
“on
the human level he was born of David’s stock” (1:3).
But, as we discussed when we examined the Gospels, according
to the Bible Jesus was not related to Joseph – he was virgin-born of God, through
an angel. Joseph was not his father therefore Jesus was not “born of David’s
stock”. This letter was written before the Gospels, so this doctrine was invented
by Paul and/or others and propagated through the letters and the Gospels.
Paul then goes on to (unintentionally) make a pretty
good argument against religion – those who have no religion but are good out of
their own hearts have been revealed as more truly good by life. What therefore can
we know of souls who have been “good” in life through the fear of the awful god
of the scriptures? Are the religious only “good” because they fear divine
punishment – does religion therefore obviate the test that it says life is?
“When
Gentiles who do not possess the law [the Jewish law of Moses] carry out its precepts by the light of
nature, then, although they have no law, they are their own law, for they
display the effect of the law inscribed on their hearts. Their conscience is
called as witness, and their own thoughts argue the case on either side,
against them or even for them, on the day when God judges the secrets of human
hearts … So my gospel declares. ” (2:14-16)
Life must be about the “secrets of human hearts” if you believe it is about judgement –
surely God wants the real heart to judge – not the false heart? An irreligious
person who is good reveals genuine goodness, not “goodness” out of fear of God
(as Job in fact admits to being in the Old Testament). A religious person has
revealed only the fact that they are scared of a god. A good atheist is
revealed by life to be really good.
Paul then tries to develop the convoluted doctrine
that Jesus’ execution was not a defeat, but the saving of us. The early
Christians were faced with the fact that Jesus was executed, which to any
bystander looks very much like a defeat – and proof that Jesus was not God. You
could be sure that it would have been pointed out to them many times by their
potential converts – “where is your god now?” But Paul tries to paint Jesus’ brutal
execution as somehow proof of god’s “love towards us” :
“but
Christ died for us while we were yet sinners, and that is God’s own proof of
his love towards us. And so, since we have now been justified by Christ’s
sacrificial death, we shall all the more certainly be saved through him from
final retribution.” (5:8-10)
How about saved by the goodness of our own hearts as
discussed above by Paul? Gone already – and Jesus’ revolutionary message that
all we had to do to please God was to love – “there is no other commandment greater” – and to forgive, and do
unto others – replaced by convoluted sacrificial doctrine. Jesus death did not
“save” us – more likely just add to the litany of human sins. Or rather the
sins of religion – Jesus was killed by religion, he was too threatening to the
established powers of the day with all its convoluted laws, animal sacrifices,
psalms and prophecies. He was a threat to the entrenched power of the high
priests. The Roman governor, Pilate, wanted to let Jesus off but the priests
insisted on his execution. Religion killed Jesus and : “we have now been justified by Christ’s sacrificial death” is just
more religion.
Of course the question would have been asked of the
original fathers of the Christian House of God – what exactly did we have to be
“saved” from? Paul now works up the doctrine of our original sin :
“for
he was delivered to death for our misdeeds, and raised to life to justify us.”
(4:25) … “Christ died for us while we
were yet sinners, and that is God’s own proof of his love towards us. And so,
since we have now been justified by Christ’s sacrificial death, we shall all
the more certainly be saved by Christ’s sacrificial death ” (5:8-9).
Our “misdeeds…while we were yet sinners” –
the unavoidable, original stain of being born human. Brilliant – we are sinful
just by being born – including the pure of heart and even (as worked up by
later doctrinaires like St. Augustine of Hippo) little babies. Therefore everybody
needs the Church’s power to avoid hell, everybody needs cleansing through
baptism, to be born again – to have our original sin washed away by the power
of Jesus (claimed to be within the grasp of the
Bishop Spong says it all :
“To speak of a Father God so enraged by human evil that he requires
propitiation for our sins that we cannot pay and thus demands the death of the
divine-human son as a guilt offering is a ludicrous idea to our century. The
sacrificial concept that focuses on the saving blood of Jesus that somehow
washes me clean, so popular in evangelical and fundamentalist circles, is by
and large repugnant to us today.” (“Why Christianity Must Change or Die”,
P.234)
Is this message of our natural sinfulness really what
Jesus said or intended? The idea of being automatically born into sin is a tidy
little money earner for the Church – but did Jesus want bigger and better
tables for the money-changers within the temple?
But Paul feels he is onto a good thing and hammers on
about our sinfulness:
“Jews
and Greeks alike are under the power of sin. This has scriptural warrant:
‘There is no just man not one;
No one who understands, no one who seeks God.
All have swerved aside, all alike have become
debased;
There is no one to show kindness; no, not one.’ ” (3:9-12)
Paul relies on the bare assertion of some inveigling Hebrew
praise-singer (Psalms 14:1) that we are “debased”.
Well, perhaps not entirely – he also relies on a myth
about a non-existent man in a non-existent place who committed an imaginary
“sin” (of eating from the Tree of Knowledge”):
“It
was through one man that sin entered the world, and through sin death.”
(5:12) “…Adam’s wrongdoing. For if the
wrongdoing of that one man brought death upon so many” (5:15) … “For as through the disobedience of one man
the many were made sinners” (5:19)
The foundation stones of the House of God that Paul
built are thus totally illusory. Rather than the “Christian” House of God it
should really be called the Pauline Church.
Paul knows how to swing the stick of fear but also
dangles the carrot of eventual reward:
“For
I reckon that the sufferings we now endure bear no comparison with the
splendour, as yet unrevealed, which is in store for us. For the created
universe waits with eager anticipation for God’s sons to be revealed.”
(8:18)
This is the carrot and stick formulae that built
Christianity up into such a force. Human systems which have failed, did so
because they forgot the infallibility of the carrot and stick method –
communism, for example, which was all stick and no carrot; or utopias, which
are all carrot and no stick.
Love finally gets a mention in Paul’s epistle:
“Love
in all sincerity, loathing evil and clinging to the good. Let love for our
brotherhood breed warmth of mutual affection. Give pride of place to one
another in esteem.” (12:9-10)
But with the usual Pauline Old Testament (Proverbs
25:21) flavour rather than understanding Christ’s purity :
“But
there is another text: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty,
give him drink; by doing this you will heap live coals on his head.’ ”
(12:20).
Do good to your enemy – it will piss him off! Rather than Christ’s idea of actually loving your enemy! Proof from
the hand of Paul for my earlier assertion that Jesus and his wisdom was real,
not invented or embellished – Jesus was beyond Paul’s or the Gospellers ability
to invent – or even to understand properly. Jesus was for real, and a cut above
the ordinary which Paul shows himself to be.
But to be fair to Paul he does occasionally get it,
as the following quote shows. If only the Pauline House of God was built on
these words as a foundation instead of the rest of his doctrine, humanity would
not have witnessed the Houses’ appalling history of violence, torture and
murder – nor its present demise into a increasingly deluded mob of odd-bods :
“Leave
no claim outstanding except that of mutual love. He who loves his neighbour has
satisfied every claim of the law. For the commandments, ‘Thou shalt not commit
adultery, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet’, and
any other commandment there may be, are all summed up in one rule, ‘Love your
neighbour as yourself.’ Love cannot wrong a neighbour; therefore the whole law
is summed up in love.” (13:8-10)
Bravo Paul! And Jesus is “summed up in love” as well. Too simple to build a House on, for
Paul – he had to invent our original sin to get some good old fear going. But
what a House it would have been if it had been founded just on Jesus’ “Love,
Forgive, Do unto others”!?
FIRST LETTER OF PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS
It didn’t take long for the Christian movement to
devolve into factions :
“I
appeal to you my brothers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ: agree among
yourselves, and avoid divisions. … I have been told, my brothers, by Chloe’s
people that there are quarrels among you.” (1:10&12). “Can you not see that while there is jealousy
and strife among you, you are living on the purely human level of your lower
nature? When one says, ‘I am Paul’s man’ and another, ‘I am for Apollos’, are
you not all too human?” (3:3-4)
Divisions occurred in the House of God that Paul was
building. They remained a feature, becoming in time, theological denominations
– and responsible for much bloodshed. There is no greater hate than that
reserved for someone who won’t agree with your religious beliefs. It’s marvellous
what you can get out of “thou shalt love one another”? But all that was in the
future and the religious fights at this stage were limited to less weighty
concerns such as circumcision.
Paul then indulges in an amazing bit of holier than
thou:
“For
my part, if I am called to account by you or by any human court of judgement,
it does not matter to me in the least. Why, I do not even pass judgement on
myself, for I have nothing on my conscience.” (4:3-4)
What a wonderful thing a name change is – Paul has
obviously forgotten about all the killing by stoning and floggings he carried
out or abetted on the earliest members of the Jesus movement when he was Saul?
Paul was also terminally sexist. No wonder the House
of God is collapsing – with the Bible as foundations and Paul as a main pillar
:
“It
is a good thing for a man to have nothing to do with women.” (7:1). And : “while every man has Christ for his Head,
woman’s head is man, as Christ’s head is God. … A man has no need to cover his
head, because man is the image of God, and the mirror of his glory, whereas
woman reflects the glory of man. For man did not originally spring from woman,
but woman was made out of man; and man was not created for woman’s sake, but
woman for the sake of man; and therefore it is woman’s duty to have a sign of
authority on her head. (11:3&7-10)
Paul knew no better – he was brought up on the sexist
Old Testament scriptures, written by men. No modern, educated man would use
Genesis to justify his sexism, surely? Unfortunately incorrect – many evangelical
and orthodox Christians do believe in the Old Testament – as recent fracas
about female priests and Bishops in modern, mainstream Churches has shown.
Sexism was not just a passing phase for Paul, he is
quite obsessed with it :
“As
in all congregations of God’s people, women should not address the meeting. They
have no licence to speak … If there is something they want to know, they can
ask their own husbands at home. It is a shocking thing that a woman should
address the congregation.” (14:34&35)
“Shocking”? This is obviously zealous, errant
nonsense – Jesus himself had close female associates – and it was only they who
remained with him when Jesus was executed – all the men had denied him and/or
fled. The inferiority of women is more Pauline doctrine based on Old Testament
myths? What is the soundness of any House of God based on such doctrine?
Paul then goes on to extol the virtues of celibacy:
“To
the unmarried and to widows I say this: it is a good thing if they stay as I am
myself; but if they cannot control themselves, they should marry.” (7:8-9)
And :
“The
unmarried man cares for the Lord’s business; his aim is to please the Lord. But
the married man cares for worldly things; his aim is to please his wife; and he
has a divided mind.” (7:32-34)
Paul didn’t see that he was encouraging extinction for
his inchoate movement because he was making Jesus’ mistake of believing that
the
“What
I mean, my friends, is this. The time we live in will not last long.”
(7:29)
Two thousand years later we must ask who was wrong –
Jesus, the Bible, Paul or all three? Bit of a dilemma for those who believe the
Bible is the word of, or inspired by God – we still await God’s kingdom on
Earth.
We then see in this letter Paul beginning to mine the
rich vein of guilt buried in humanity’s natural sexuality – a vein of guilt
that the House of God turned into a river of gold over the years. The celibate
Paul is stridently obsessed with human sexuality :
“Do
you not know that your bodies are limbs and organs of Christ? Shall I then take
from Christ his bodily parts and make them over to a harlot? … Shun
fornication. Every other sin that a man can commit is outside the body; but the
fornicator sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a
shrine of the indwelling holy spirit …You do not belong to yourself; you were
bought at a price. Then honour God in your body.” (6:15&18-20).
Paul thus sewed the seeds of much human
misunderstanding and misery from the pouch of his own obsession. But he admits
that we will just have to take his word for it :
“On
the question of celibacy, I have no instructions from the Lord, but I give my
judgement as one by God’s mercy is fit to be trusted.” (7:25).
So Paul admits to making it all up, but feels he is
one of God’s chosen and “fit to be trusted”?
Paul does eventually manage to get away from his misogynistic
obsessions and consider Jesus’ unique message about love :
“Love
is patient; love is kind and envies no one. Love is never boastful, nor
conceited, nor rude; never selfish, not quick to take offence. Love keeps no
score of wrongs; nor does gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the
truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its
hope, and its endurance.” (13:4-7).
And moments of insight into the dichotomy of the
human condition :
“Sown
as an animal body it is raised a spiritual body. If there is such a thing as an
animal body, there is also a spiritual body.” (15:44).
But Paul is not spiritual himself – the main rational
for his faith is the Darwinian drive for bodily survival:
“If Christ was not raised, then our gospel is null and void. …For if the dead are not raised, it follows
that Christ was not raised; and if Christ was not raised, your faith has
nothing in it.” (15:13&16-17)
“Your faith has nothing in it”!? How about faith
in the “T” Truth of Jesus’ message that we should Love, Forgive and Do unto
others? Paul shows clearly the difference between the “baby” of Jesus’ message of
love and forgiveness and the bathwater of the doctrines of the House of God. The
hope of good old animal survival is the foundation of Christian beliefs and the
main reason why most people take up the Christian faith – then as now.
Is Jesus’ life, and the Truth of his message
about the primacy of love and forgiveness dependent on the truth of the
biblical story of his physical survival and “null and void” if we don’t get to
take these bodies up to some paradise? Paul’s words need no interpretation:
“our gospel is null and void” … “your faith has nothing in it”. The motives of
Pauline Christianity are venal.
II CORINTHIANS
Here we get more convoluted doctrine:
“Christ
was innocent of sin, and yet for our sake God made him one with the sinfulness
of men, so that in him we might be made one with the goodness of God himself.”
(5:21)
And for those who found his doctrine wooly-headed
nonsense Paul had this :
“And if indeed our gospel be found veiled,
the only people who find it so are those on the way to perdition.” (4:3)
Who is going to own up to confusion after that?
But Paul endured much for his beliefs :
“Five
times the Jews have given me the thirty-nine strokes; three times I have been
beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I have been shipwrecked, and
for twenty-four hours I was adrift on the open sea.” (11:24-26)
Unless he was making it all up? That is the problem
with the Bible, what to believe? On the balance of probabilities it seems to be
largely true because Acts and his letters have a ring about them when
describing Paul’s travels and travails. His zeal and fervour may have led to
dud doctrine to build a house of love on, but it seems he was brave.
But Paul was exceeding vain :
In
no respect did I fall short of these superlative apostles, even if I am a
nobody. The marks of a true apostle were there in the work I did among you,
which called for such constant fortitude, and was attended by signs, marvels,
and miracles.” (12:11-12)
Paul was rankled at being seen as lesser than the
apostles, he was a self-promoter. Whatever virtues he might have had, modesty was
not among them. And he was sarcastic :
“Is
there anything in which you were treated worse than the other congregations –
except this, that I never sponged upon you? How unfair of me! I crave
forgiveness.” (12:13)
Paul also makes some extraordinary and boastful
claims to boost his position in the Jesus movement in this second epistle to
the Corinthians. This about his mystic powers and heavenly visions:
“I
am obliged to boast. It does no good; but I shall go on to tell of visions and
revelations granted by the Lord.”
Paul claims to have been:
“caught
up as far as the third heaven … caught up into paradise”
And had special revelations granted to him of:
“words
so secret that human lips may not repeat them.” (All 12:1-5)
Was Paul a spiritual mystic, or just a liar
desperately trying to enhance his status in the Jesus movement? We will never
know, but he reveals himself to be vain, jealous, boastful, and sarcastic by
his letters. If we consider also the crimes perpetrated when he was Saul, Paul
falls well short of someone who should be allowed to dictate the doctrines of
any sound House of God.
In examining the “Christian” House of God it is
obvious already that it has been built on Paul rather than Jesus. Consider how
different that House could have been if it were built on Jesus’ simple “Thou
Shalt Love One Another” – rather than Paul’s zealous misogyny, celibacy and
obsessive doctrines like original sin.
GALATIANS
We see signs in this epistle that the Christian
ministry was beginning to turn to the Gentiles rather than concentrating on
converting the Jews, who were proving to be a hard nut to crack.
In this letter we also see more of the bitchy
in-fighting which was beginning to be a part of early Christianity – and over
such immaterial things as circumcision. As the life and words of Jesus began to
recede further into the past there was more and more room for opinion, interpretation
and dispute. One of the obvious motives for writing the Gospels was to settle
these disputes – to give support for one camp or another through the words of
Jesus – and an explanation for why the Gospels are contradictory.
Paul reveals himself as a man of the ancient tribal
scriptures – not a real Christian, not a follower of Jesus’ new message of love:
“But
what does Scripture say? ‘Drive out the slave-woman and her son, for the son of
the slave shall not share the inheritance with the free woman’s sons’.”
(4:30)
Paul is telling us here: 1.) it’s OK to have slaves;
2.) it’s OK to have children by them; 3.) these children are lesser – because
it’s in Genesis (21:10). We have seen from our earlier review of the Old
Testament that the whole hideous evil of Western slavery has biblical sanction.
We have to ask our selves whether your God is living in this House, built on
these Biblical foundations? God’s nature may remain a puzzle, but our nature is
infallibly revealed by the God we believe in.
Paul does manage a glimpse of the real mission of
Jesus – it is not to praise a vain and insecure God, it is not to get forgiveness
for our original sin – the sin of being human – it is about love :
“For
the whole law can be summed up in a single commandment: ‘Love your neighbour as
yourself.’ ” (5:14-15).
He’s right “the whole law”. Why not stop there? Just
too simple for an “H” House?
Too simple, what we need is some complicated doctrine
– as we see on the next page :
“all
those who want to make a fair outward and bodily show who are trying to force
circumcision upon you; their sole object is to escape persecution for the cross
of Christ.” (6:12)
Pardon?
Paul foresaw the problem of infighting :
“But
if you go on fighting one another, tooth and nail, all you can expect is mutual
destruction.” (5:15)
But they were fighting over convoluted, incredible,
inconsequential doctrine – much like the sort he was formulating.
EPHESIANS
Although Jesus was only concerned with preaching to
the Jews the Christian movement of Paul’s time is having more luck converting
the gentiles around the eastern Mediterranean world and Paul concocts doctrine
to suit :
“Gentiles
and Jews, he has made the two one, and in his own body of flesh and blood has
broken down the enmity. … This was his purpose, to reconcile the two in a
single body to God through the cross, on which he killed the enmity.” (2:14&16)
But the sexism is relentless :
“Wives,
be subject to your husbands as to the Lord; for the man is the head of the
woman, Just as Christ also is the head of the church. Christ is, indeed, the
Saviour of the body; but just as the church is subject to Christ, so must women
be to their husbands in everything.” (5:22-24)
Again, is this the word of God, or inspired by
“him”?
PHILIPPIANS,
More about the
circumcision controversy.
COLOSSIANS
More about the
foul cravings of the body :
“Then
put to death those parts of you which belong to the earth – fornication,
indecency, lust, foul cravings …” (3:5)
More about women’s secondary role :
“Wives
be subject to your husbands ; that is your Christian duty.” (3:18)
More about giving the Divine imprimatur to slavery :
“Slaves,
give entire obedience to your earthly masters, not merely with an outward show
of service, to curry favour with men, but with single-mindedness, out of
reverence for the Lord.” (3:22)
No wonder
THESSALONIANS
Paul overlooks
his own jealousy and boastfulness as revealed in previous letters where he
tries to elevate himself to equal position with the Apostles and claims special
visions and revelations from God (2 Corinthians 12):
“ We
do not curry favour with men; we seek only the favour of God … We have never
sought honour from men, from you or from anyone else.” (1:4&6)
Religion in all its forms has always been about power
and status for its officers. Paul has previously sought “honour from men” along
with the best.
And Paul still expected the imminent coming of the
Lord :
“first
the Christian dead will rise, then we who are left alive shall join them,
caught up in clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” (4:17).
Paul did not believe that he would die : “then we who are left alive shall join them”.
So, if these imaginings were definitely proven wrong – what reliance should we
place of his other beliefs?
TIMOTHY
In this letter, Paul consigns Hymenaeus and Alexander
to Satan for the heinous crime of blasphemy, then sets about putting those
pesky women back in their place (again):
“A
woman must be a learner, listening quietly and with due submission. I do not
permit a woman to be a teacher, nor must woman domineer over man; she should be
quiet. For Adam was created first, and Eve afterwards; and it was not Adam who
was deceived; it was woman who, yielding to deception, fell into sin. Yet she
will be saved through motherhood – if only women continue in faith, love and
holiness, with a sober mind.” (2:11-15).
Yep, sounds like the words of God alright! No wonder
most of the Christian churches are still rejecting women as priests. But Paul
has it on good authority – the Jewish creation myths – the same concrete
foundations the rest of the Christian House of God is founded on.
And slavery is OK (again):
“All
who wear the yoke of slavery must count their own masters worthy of all
respect.” (6:1)
2 TIMOTHY, TITUS, PHILEMON
More of the same. Nothing that could pass for the
inerrant word of God except for this interesting bit :
“All
the more reason why you should pull them up sharply, so that they may come to a
sane belief, instead of lending their ears to Jewish myths and commandments of
merely human origin, the work of men who turn their backs upon the truth.”
(Titus 1:13-14)
And what “Jewish
myths” would they be Paul – Adam
and Eve perhaps? This is rich from somebody like Paul who relied heavily on the
Jewish myths to construct his own “commandments
of merely human origin” – like the above inferiority of women from the myth
of Adam and Eve. Paul also uses the myth of Adam eating from the tree of
knowledge to justify his doctrines of original sin; and he uses this doctrine
of original sin to, in turn, found the pivotal House of God doctrine of
salvation through killing Jesus.
PAULINE LETTERS SUMMARY
Paul, with his zealotry, managed to turn the Jesus
movement with its simple Truths of “Love; Forgive; Do unto others” – into
“Paulianity” – with its convoluted doctrines that Jesus never dreamed of. In
this way Paul laid the foundations for the House of God, the construction of
which became, to use Paul’s own caustic words from the letter to Titus, “the work of men who turn their back upon the
truth” – men who “lend their ears to
Jewish myths and commandments of merely human origin.” An excuse can be
made for Paul because his commandments and doctrines were created not because he
turned his back on the truth – but because in his pre-scientific day, the
Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve were the “truth” as he knew it.
But what can be said about this House of God today which
insists on maintaining as its foundations ancient imaginings and history that
we now know are myths? What can we say about men who today turn their back upon
scientific truths through fear of a primitive, brutal, tribal god? Or people
who cynically perpetuate these myths to maintain their own power?
From Paul’s letters we can trace the growth of
disputes within the Jesus movement (like the role of women or the act of
circumcision) and the need to construct doctrine to settle them. Also the need
to construct doctrine to settle the misgivings of potential converts about the
Jesus story (like salvation to explain away the execution of Jesus). We can see
the growing need to have something definitive in writing – the very words of
Christ – the gospel truth. But the Gospels, which were written after Paul, were
written as much to settle disputes between factions in the Jesus movement and
to authorise doctrine through Jesus’ (supposedly) own words, as to keep the
memory of Jesus alive.
Jesus’ new messages did get into the Gospels but they
were subverted for us today by the tying of them to the old understandings for
the purpose of proselytizing Jewish population of
In defence of Paul it must be said that there is
debate in the world of biblical scholarship as to what in the Letters was
actually written by Paul and what was added and/or embellished – similar to
what was done to Jesus’ actual words by compilers who had so much of a hand in
the words of the Bible. To quote biblical scholar Margaret Davies :
“Most
scholars agree that the following epistles are authentically Pauline: Romans 1
and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. … The
majority of scholars now regard 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus as pseudonymous … but
they disagree about the possible authenticity of the other epistles attributed
to Paul in the New Testament.”
- The
Ironic that the Bible’s unreliability is Paul’s only
possible personal defence. But because of the unreliability of the “word of God”
again, the biggest question remains: what did Jesus really say? Did his real
message get diluted, lost to many, in the proselytizing? I like the approach of
Geza Vermes on this point :
“Look
for what Jesus himself taught instead of being satisfied with what has been
taught about him.”
- “The Authentic Gospel of Jesus”, p. 417
So, once again, the question has to be personally
resolved and our decisions will define our selves, not Jesus. Life is an
impeccable opportunity for self knowledge and for self creation.
I can find very little in Paul’s epistles that could
be mistaken for God’s word and only a little that could be called inspired.
Paul only occasionally manages to relate to Jesus’ wisdom and compassion. Jesus
tried to bring new understanding, but Paul was building a House much like the
old one that killed Jesus. Paul confuses the issue of “what Jesus himself
taught” with “what has been taught about him”.
HEBREWS
Regarded by all scholars today as non-Pauline. The
writer is obviously of the Jewish religion and is writing to the Jewish members
of the early Christian movement. The letter is concerned firstly to establish
Jesus as the unique son of God :
“For
God never said to any angel, ‘Thou art my Son; today I have begotten thee.’ ”
(1:5)
And to explain how Jesus’ execution was in fact a
victory, not the defeat it seemed to be :
“crowned
now with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that, by God’s gracious
will, in tasting death he should stand for us all.” (2:9)
Doctrine building by assertion. It is clear that the writer sees himself and his audience still
very much as Jews – God’s chosen. The new religion of “Christianity” has not
yet been constructed:
“It
is not angels that he takes to himself but the sons of Abraham” (2:16) “the religion we profess” (3:1)
And ties Jesus securely to the Jewish scriptures:
“Our Lord is sprung from
But the author is brave enough to suggest that
following the rules of the old god brought no joy to the Hebrews (they had
been, after all, imprisoned by the Egyptians and Babylonians, defeated by the
Assyrians, subjugated by the Romans and finally the Temple in Jerusalem, their
holy of holies, was destroyed). Jesus is portrayed as the saviour of the Jews,
bringing better rules and better hope to the Jews than the old ones:
“The
earlier rules are cancelled as impotent and useless since the Law brought
nothing to perfection; and a better hope is introduced, through which we draw
near to God” (7:18-19)
For a “chosen” people they sure had suffered a lot –
and were to suffer even worse with the Diaspora, many pogroms and eventually
the Holocaust. The writer works up the doctrine that Jesus’ execution was not a
defeat but a victory, in fact their salvation – doctrinal “consecration” :
“it
is by the will of God that we have been consecrated, through the offering of
the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.” (10:10)
The Hebrews author makes the same old mistake :
“ For
‘soon, very soon’ in the words of Scripture, he who is to come will come; he
will not delay ” (10:38).
The writer dishes out the essential dose of fear :
“It
is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (10:31)
A terrible God indeed. One who would sanction the brutal
killing of animals :
“If
even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned.” (12:20)
Pity the author did not listen more closely to what
Jesus really said. Are these the words of your god? Like the rest of the Bible
they are the words of man. They do not reveal the nature of God but only the
nature of the people who believe them to be the words of God.
JAMES
James epistle is also directed at the Jewish
followers of Jesus :
“Greetings
to the Twelve Tribes dispersed throughout the world.” (1:1)
James does manage some wisdom :
“be
quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to be angry.” (1:19)
Charity :
“go
to the help of orphans and widows in their distress” (1:27)
And love :
“the
sovereign law laid down in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ ”
(2:8).
James, like Jesus, doesn’t hold out much hope for the
rich :
“Next
a word to you who have great possessions. Weep and wail over the miserable fate
descending on you… You have lived on earth in wanton luxury, fattening
yourselves like cattle – and the day for slaughter has come.” (5:1&5)
The usual brutal God. The present evangelical
movement is trying to work up a modern doctrine about how wealth is actually
OK. I wonder how they talk around James’ (and Jesus’) fairly clear statements
about rich people being doomed?
But maybe there is hope for the rich, because he’s
wrong about the imminence of the “coming of the Lord”:
“be
patient and stout hearted, for the coming of the Lord is near.” (5:8)
1 PETER
Some more of the usual doctrine worked up by
assertion – by killing Jesus humanity saved itself:
“consecrated with the sprinkled
blood of Jesus Christ.” (1:2) ;
Jesus’ bodily resurrection gave us hope for life
after death :
“gave
us new birth into a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead” (1:3) ;
And if it all seems a little far fetched just have
faith in what I say :
“more
precious than perishable gold is faith which has stood the test.”
(1:7)
But, like all the others, Peter gets the imminence of
the second coming wrong :
“in
this last period of time” (1:20); “The
end of all things is upon us” (4:7); “The
time has come for the judgement to begin” (4:17).
Wrong demonstrably here, so how much for the rest of
his assertions? Peter was nowhere near “the end” – religion’s murderous future
had only just begun – it was not to end with the murder of Jesus. Millions were
to be slaughtered yet in the name of God.
Peter also believed in Noah’s ark and the fact that
we are all descended from its eight human inhabitants :
“and
in the ark a few persons, eight in all, were brought to safety through the
water.” (3:20).
If Peter believed in the old, pre-scientific creation
myths obviously he was not working with any Divine insights – just floundering
around with the available, human understandings of the day. There is some
excuse for Peter but modern evangelists still believe it in this educated age.
2 PETER
More of the same except that Peter does latch onto
that old money-spinner for the House of God – lust :
“Above
all he will punish those who follow their abominable lusts … These men are like
brute beasts, born in the course of nature to be caught and killed.”
(2:10&12).
“Brute beasts”? Guilt for our “abominable lusts” –
our sinful, animal natures is the House of God’s main card. We are spiritual
beings, but we are in an animal body
which must have abominable lusts to continue the species, and the Church makes
it main living out of keeping us ashamed of this fact. What exactly is there to
be ashamed of – the way God made us? Did we make ourselves wrongly perhaps? I
don’t think so Peter, wrong again.
As well as anxious about our animal natures, the
House of God also needs to keep us anxious about the second coming :
“But
the Day of the Lord will come; it will come, unexpected as a thief.” (3:10)
Apprehensive about the coming of the Lord and guilty
about the “abominable lusts” all us “brute beasts” have. The lucrative formulae
for the future Church is being set in place.
1, 2 & 3 JOHN
In the first epistle of John we see the beginning of
the doctrine of confession
“If
we confess our sins, he is just, and may be trusted to forgive our sins and
cleanse us from every kind of wrong” (1:9)
But John, like the rest, is mistaken :
“My
children, this is the last hour!” (2:18).
Not a very reliable lot, are they? That this “last
hour” was true was proven to John’s mind by the ever growing number of
antichrists bobbing up. They were in actual fact just members of the Christian
movement who were not following doctrine – anybody who does not agree with your
assertions is an antichrist – handy!
John befuddles with his spin on sin :
“the
man who sins is a child of the devil,” (3:8) “A child of God does not commit sin, because the divine seed remains in
him; he cannot be a sinner because he is God’s child.” (3:9)
But we are all born sinners according to the doctrine
of Original Sin. If we hold to that doctrine it means, according to John’s
doctrine in turn, that we not the children of God but the children of Satan?
John does eventually get around to love.
“Everyone
who loves is a child of God and knows God, but the unloving know nothing of
God. For God is love” (4:8-9)
“But
if a man says, ‘I love God’, while hating his brother, he is a liar.”
(4:20)
The Christians’ big problem has always been in
knowing who was their “brother”. Brother has always, unfortunately, meant those
who believe in the same doctrine :
“We
know that we are of God’s family, while the whole godless world lies in the
power of the evil one.” (5:19)
The rest are “pagans” :
“It
was on Christ’s work that they went out; and they would accept nothing from
pagans.” (3 John 8).
The letters of John end with an allusion with schisms
one Diotrephes was causing amongst the local congregation.
JUDE
Jude is concerned with the defence of the faith :
“and appeal to
you to join the struggle in defence of the faith …It is in danger from certain
persons who have wormed their way in” (Jude 3-4).
Jude is
concerned with “licentiousness” :
“They are a set
of grumblers and malcontents. They follow their lusts.” (Jude 4 &16).
Jude also saw
the end fast approaching :
“In the final
age there will be men who pour scorn on religion, and follow their own godless
lusts.” (Jude18)
It’s not hard
to pour scorn on religion – it did after all kill Jesus because he threatened
its power, and in the hands of people like Jude went on to kill millions of
more people.
Jude manages to set new standards in hate by
suggesting even clothes might be a suitable for it :
“hate the very
clothing that is contaminated with sensuality.” (Jude 23)
Jude the prude.
God didn’t have much else to say through Jude.
Here endeth the
letters. Now for some really rabid eschatological imaginings:
THE REVELATION OF JOHN
Here we really get down to the core
nonsense of the Christian House of God. Feverish, psychotic imaginings which
have served to keep the masses in fear for House of God building purposes
through the centuries. Even supposedly educated biblical evangelicals are in
thrall of Revelation-inspired fear to this day.
We have spirits, angels, trumpets, sealed
books, scrolls, horsemen of the Apocalypse, 144,000 (Rev. 7:5) saved from hell (all
Jews – 12,000 from each tribe) – thunder, fire, lightening, plagues, scorpions,
and wormwood for the rest of us for five months until we wished we were dead.
Then a third of mankind to be killed by angels.(9:18) A great red dragon with
seven heads and ten horns, a leopard-like body, bear’s feet and lion’s mouth – out
of which came blasphemy. This beast branded everyone who wanted to buy or sell
with its number 666 (the last three digits of my estate agent’s phone number –
I always suspected something). Those branded with the mark of the beast have to
drink the wine from the grapes of God’s wrath out of the cup of his vengeance
and then be tormented in sulphurous flames for ever and ever.
If that don’t get you then you will probably be
reaped with a sharp sickle and squished in God’s winepress designed to vintage
the grapes of wrath (14:19), or struck with a plague and “foul malignant sores” (16:2), or burn in flames, or plunge into
darkness and agony and gnaw your tongue (16:10) – I wonder if it’s too late to
say I believe in original sin and Adam and Eve? – or get slaughtered at
Armageddon.
But it’s not all bad news because those who have died
in God’s name get resurrected for 1000 years living with Christ in the first
resurrection. Then all the dead get resurrected in the second resurrection and
judged – those not on the “roll of the
living” (20:12) to be flung into the eternal lake of fire. The “lucky”
saved get eternity in a brand new Jerusalem made out of gold, pearls, jasper,
lapis lazuli, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, beryl, topaz (and more besides)
which is to descend from the clouds.
Who exactly believes this flagrant tosh? Well
Christian evangelicals and fundamentalists of course. But they can’t have read
it too closely. If I was them I wouldn’t get my hopes up. The twelve gates to
this new “paradise” are each inscribed with the name of one of the 12 tribes of
“It had a great
high wall, with twelve gates, at which were twelve angels; and on the gates
were inscribed the names of the twelve tribes of
No gate for
gentiles – and what do they imagine the “great high wall” is for? Revelation
even sees the Gentiles as one of the miserable plagues :
“But have
nothing to do with the outer court of the temple; do not measure that; for it
has been given over to the Gentiles, and they will trample the
Anyhow, let’s
face it, who’d want to be there? The already mentioned original saved 144,000
were not only all men, but
“men who did
not defile themselves with women” (14:4)!
There are going
to be a lot of wankers or homosexuals in paradise! Maybe they should get the
Muslims to lend them a few dark-eyed houri?
“I warn everyone who hears the words of the
prophecy of this book: if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the
plagues described in this book.” (22;18)
So, here endeth the Bible – on a curse.
Amen?
So be it?
THE BIBLE – GOD’S TRUTH?
Has examining the New Testament caused the scales to fall
from our eyes – can we now see the Bible to be the word of God?
No, the New Testament just presents us with more
contradictions, disagreements, bald assertions and, in the case of Revelations,
babbling lunacy. The writers of the New Testament constantly had one eye on the
Old Testament because any “authority” that they could claim for the veracity of
what they were writing in the eyes of their target audience – their fellow Jews
– depended on them not denying the old scriptures, but being confirmed by them.
“ ‘Do
not suppose that I have come to abolish the Law and the prophets; I did not
come to abolish but to complete’ ” (Matt. 5:17)
The Gospels were not an exercise in recording the
truth for posterity but rather an exercise in establishing the authority of Jesus
through referencing him to the Old Testament. Hitchens describes the process
like this:
“if
you pick up any of the four Gospels and read them at random, it will not be
long before you learn that such and such an act or saying, attributed to Jesus,
was done so that an ancient prophecy should come true. (Speaking of the arrival
of Jesus in
C.
Hitchens, “God is Not Great” (Pp. 109-110)
While Hitchens is one of the leading zealots in that
other incredible religion – the House of Disbelief – he hits the mark here. The
truth of the New Testament rests heavily on the truth of the Old Testament which,
as we have already seen, is largely mythical and untruthful – obviously the “crude
carpentry” of man – not the work of God. How could an all-knowing God write
down or inspire significantly different versions of what happened at such key
moments as in the
A MORE SOPHISTICATED EXEGESIS NEEDED?
Apologists of
the Bible insist that it needs a more careful sophisticated, allegorical,
metaphorical, spiritual reading and exegesis to reveal its true meaning. Origen,
one of the early Church Fathers (
“with all the attention
and reverence they deserve, it is certain that, in the very act of reading and
diligently studying them, his mind and feelings will be touched by a divine
breath and he will recognise that the words he is reading are not the
utterances of a man but the language of God.”
-
Origen, “On First Principles (4.1.6)
I’m afraid that I was not “touched by a divine
breath” of the “language of God”. How could God utter the statement that women
were unclean, second-class people who should be seen and not heard as stated in
Paul’s letters, who could sully men just by having contact with them as stated
in Revelations? How could God’s divine breath utter words condoning beating a
slave (albeit with a rod no bigger than your thumb), slavery at all, the ethnic
cleansing of men, women, children and animals, stoning a rebellious son? In
total, any claim for the inerrancy of the Bible can only be driven by the fear
of a god who would condone such things and/or a vested interest in religion. A
“g” god could have written/inspired the Bible, but not any credible “G” God.
But the early Church fathers had some neat
intellectual gymnastics to vault criticism of the Bible:
“Divine wisdom
has arranged for certain stumbling blocks … by inserting in the midst a number
of impossibilities and incongruities, in order that the narrative might, as it
were, present a barrier to the reader and lead him to refuse to proceed along
the pathway of the ordinary meaning.” – Origen, ibid. (4.2.9)
Being the word of God, any mistakes, “impossibilities
and incongruities”, could be passed off as part of God’s divine plan – “God
works in mysterious ways”?
This, of course is where all the trouble starts with
the House of God – many people have found their own truth, meaning, and their
own evil god through “sophisticated” exegesis. The god in the “Holy” Bible can
be seen to authorise such things as the Holocaust, the Inquisition, the
Crusades, slavery, witch burning, and murderous inter-denominational wars. But
as our scientific, historic, and archaeological knowledge increases the untruths
of the Bible are plain to see. Its cosmology and creation stories have been revealed
as just plain incorrect (metaphorically, allegorically, or any way you want to
look at them); much of the history is wrong (history is history, it is not a
metaphor for what you may wish had happened); time has revealed the prophecies
as failed (unless you accept the circular reasoning that the Bible proves
itself – inventing New Testament stories to make it appear as though Old
Testament prophecies came to pass – like changing Jesus’ birthplace to
Bethlehem for instance, and like the riding of a donkey into Jerusalem as
related above).
IF GOD WROTE/INSPIRED THE BIBLE WHY DIDN’T HE INSPIRE
THE PRESERVATION OF THE ORIGINAL VERSION?
If God could inspire men to write the Bible, why
couldn’t He inspire men to preserve the original version He wrote?
“If one wants to insist that God inspired the
very words of scripture, what would be the point if we don’t have the
very words of scripture?”
Bart D. Ehrman,
“Misquoting Jesus” (P.11)
And/or inspire men to prevent them from adding to, or
altering, the original?
“Some
of the most familiar verses of the New Testament were not originally part of the text, but were added by later
scribes. These scribal additions are often found in late medieval manuscripts
of the New Testament, but not in manuscripts of the earlier centuries. But
because some of the best-known English editions of the New Testament, such as
the King James Bible (the Authorised Version), were based not on early
manuscripts, but later ones, these verses became part of the Bible tradition in
English-speaking lands.”
(ibid. Pp. 265-6)
Ehrman lists ten key Biblical verses which have been
changed – and they are often verses which are pivotal for key doctrines (like
the Trinity and the Eucharist). Additions to the Bible are not a matter of
opinion, it can be shown that the present accepted, “authorised” Bible has been
added to if we refer to our earliest Biblical fragments and manuscripts. In
1707 John Mill (fellow
“It
is one thing to say the originals were inspired, but the reality is that we
don’t have the originals”
-
Bart D. Ehrman (Ibid. P.10)
The truth is plain to see – the Bible and the “g” god
within it is solely the creation of man. And, from all the blatant sexism and
misogyny, it was obviously men who wrote and rewrote the Bible – it would be
interesting to read a Bible written by women – and to contemplate the god they would
find?
HOW DID THE IDEA
OF THE SCRIPTURES BEING GOD’S WORD ORIGINATE?
How did the Gospels, Acts, Letters, and the
misogynistic ravings of John of Patmos become joined with the original ancient Hebrew
imaginings to form the Christian House of God’s Bible – and come to be credited
to God?
As time passed after the death of Jesus, more and
more gospels came to be written. It was realised that an authorised canon was
needed to stop all the new writing – much of which was conflicting and causing schisms
and controversies (for example, the Arian controversy). The Bible was cobbled
together by the early Church fathers for this purpose – and then became “D”
Divine solely through their assertion. The Bible was also made to end with a
curse on anybody who tries to change it. To protect the divinity, hence
inerrancy, of the Bible the vested theological interests insisted that any
inconsistencies, illogicalities, contradictions or downright fallacies in the
Bible are as a result of our faulty reading and lack of sophisticated
understanding of the rich allegories and metaphors which God used. If you can’t
understand the Bible, or if it seems to contradict itself, then that is your
fault – because God wrote/inspired the Bible.
Once asserted as Divine, the words of the Bible were
defended with brutality – people were tortured to death for doubting it – even burned
to death (William Tyndale) just for translating it into your own language – the
danger being it could be read by the common man (and potentially criticised!) The
House of God was always afraid of critical eyes over their cherished “B” Book
from God. The Bible was always about maintaining Church power rather than
finding and imparting any Truths.
BIBLICAL INFALLIBILITY
Can anybody today, with a brain to think and an eye
to see, still support the doctrine of Biblical infallibility? This from Bishop
Spong :
“Was this claim
for the Bible to be the ‘Word of God’, no matter how it is interpreted, ever
appropriate for this volume which contains sixty-six books that were written
over a period of perhaps twelve hundred years? Can such a claim stand even the
barest scrutiny? … Is this claim not the primary source from which evil has
flowed so freely from the Christian church throughout history?”
-
“The Sins of Scripture”, P. 17
That “evil
has flowed so freely from the Christian church throughout history” is
not just Spong’s opinion, but an indisputable fact – as a short walk through
history will show (Crusades, religious wars, Inquisitions, burnings at the
stake etc.). Again, how can this be so – from an institution which bears the
name of the man who brought us the message that we should love one another,
forgive our enemies and do unto others as we would have them do unto ourselves?
This is the question the Christian House of God must answer if it is to survive
as anything other than a refuge for fundamentalist ratbags who have turned
their back on Christ to worship out of fear the god that Jesus tried, indeed
died, to replace – with one of love and forgiveness.
DISAGREEMENT
AMONG THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS ABOUT THE INTERTWINING OF THE NEW AND OLD
TESTAMENTS
There was some disagreement about basing the new
message of Jesus upon the old Hebrew beliefs. Some early Church fathers did not
agree with finding Jesus in the old Hebrew scriptures – for example Marcion
(c.100-165) who believed that Christianity was an entirely new religion. But others,
like Irenaeus (c.140 – 200 AD, bishop of
“The
task of the exegete was to [fit] the clues together like the interlocking
pieces of a vast puzzle. Irenaeus compared the scriptures to a mosaic, composed
of innumerable tiny stones which, once they had been placed together correctly,
formed the image of a handsome king.”
- Irenaeus “Against Heresies” 1:8-9 (from
Karen Armstrong “On the Bible” P. 105).
But, like all mosaics, Iraneus’ “tiny stones” can be
reassembled to make up any picture you want – as many have done over the
history of the House of God to make up many images more horrific than a
“handsome king”, and many justifications for brutal acts.
The majority of the Church fathers agreed that to
authenticate Jesus they needed the authority of the old scriptures. They were thus
determined to drag Jesus back within the Old Testament covers. Eusebius
(260-340 AD, bishop of
“Every
prophet, every ancient writer, every revolution of the state, every law, every
ceremony of the old covenant points only to Christ, announces only him,
represents only him.”
- from Karen Armstrong, “On The Bible”, P.
106.
Apologia (a rational explanation of faith to
convince, usually pagan, audiences) and exegesis (interpreting and explaining
biblical text) was turned into an art form by the fathers of the Christian
House of God. “Fathers” like Justin (100 – 160 AD) a pagan convert who:
“argued
that Jesus was the incarnation of the Logos which had been active in the world
throughout history, inspiring Greeks and Hebrews alike … The Logos had taken
many forms before its definitive revelation in Jesus. It had spoken through
Plato and Socrates. When Moses thought he heard God speaking from the burning
bush, he had really been listening to the Logos.”
- Karen Armstrong, (Ibid. Pp. 103 -104.)
Jesus’ simple ideas, in this way, became buried under
a bushel of apologia, exegesis, doctrine and dogma.
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN HOUSE OF GOD
How did the movement formed around the memory of a
man who attacked the establishment come to be the establishment? How did Jesus’
ideas about the meek inheriting the world, his preference for the downtrodden
of society, become a power base for the high and mighty? How did Jesus, who
attacked religion, become a religion?
Emperor Constantine saw the uses of a state religion to
-
Dominic
Crossan, “Jesus, A Revolutionary Biology”
P. 201
Early historian, Eusebius, was less than convinced
that the process was concerned with arriving at Truth :
Detachments
of the bodyguard and troops surrounded the entrance of the palace with drawn
swords, and through the midst of them the men of God proceeded without fear
into the innermost of the imperial apartments, in which some were the Emperor’s
companions at table, while others reclined on couches arranged on either side.
One might have thought that a picture of Christ’s kingdom was thus shadowed
forth, and a dream rather than reality.
- “Life of
“Shadowed forth” – not a good start – and the
ordinary people, amongst whom Jesus preferred to dwell, were already on the
outside looking in and facing drawn swords. Under
SUMMARY
I believe I have presented enough evidence to support
the following conclusions:
1. The Bible still forms
the foundations of the House of God.
2. The Bible is not the
“word of God” but the word of man. It is mostly incorrect – cosmology and creation
stories revealed by science to be wrong; history revealed by archaeology to be
concocted; prophecies revealed by time as failed; and inveigling songs and
psalms of worship to the ancient Hebrew god which didn’t work (the Jewish
nation was defeated and enslaved many times by the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians,
Greeks and Romans – even God’s home, the Temple in Jerusalem, was obliterated).
3. The Bible depicts an
incredible god in man’s image: male, vain, ethnic-cleansing, parochial, slavery-approving,
sexist, jealous, brutal and needy for worship.
4. The Bible does contain
some laws and morals useful for society but they were not unique, being taken
from, or shared with, earlier and concurrent societies in their area.
5. The Bible does contain
the story of a great man, Jesus, who was unique – a rebel who opposed religion and
argued with its officers and who brought a new message of love and forgiveness
even for enemies, and of doing unto others.
6. Religion killed Jesus –
not “the Jews” or the Romans – because he threatened its authority by bringing
new understandings : “you have heard it said … but I say unto you …”
(e.g. an eye for an eye cf. turn the other cheek), contradicting its officers,
and drawing large crowds.
7. After Jesus’ death, his message
was embellished by the Gospellers with Old Testament references in order to get
the scriptural authority necessary to proselytise their fellow Jews into the
Jesus movement.
8. Then doctrinaires like
Paul and other early Church fathers buried Jesus’ “T” Truths (love, forgive, do
unto others) under bushels of their own incredible “t” truths – like virgin
birth, salvation, original sin, and the “T” Trinity.
9. Exegesis and doctrine
became an industry – Jesus’ own trinity: Love; Forgive; Do unto others fits on
one line but
10. Religion’s incredible
doctrines and meanings have become meaninglessness’ greatest ally. When people
lose belief in religion’s incredible model for the meaning of life (a one-off
test of an endless stream of new souls for eternal reward or punishment) they
often lose belief in any special meaning in life at all.
11. The Christian religion has
devolved from the spirituality of Jesus to be Darwinian – about survival of the
animal body.
12. There are many filters
between the real Jesus and us. The story of Jesus and his words – the Gospels –
are journalism written decades after Jesus’ death from anecdotes carried all
that time in the verbal form, then embellished to weave them closely to the Old
Testament to proselytize the Gospellers fellow Jews. We do not have the
original Gospels – only copies of copies of copies which were then subjected to
transcriptions, translations, and religious editing. The editing of the Bible included
choosing which of the many gospels, letters and zealous ravings like
Revelations should be in the New Testament.
13. The present “Christian”
House of God is in fact a Judeo/Pauline construction wherein the Old Testament’s
awful “g” god of fear has been securely installed.
I repeat what I said earlier – the more I read the
Bible the more I consider that you will not find God in the Bible, but your
Self. You will find your Self in the bits you hold to be true – but especially
in the bits that you hold most dear?
THE MODERN HOUSE OF GOD IS SURPRISED AT OUR MATERIALISM
When we come to the present
day we find that the House of God laments, and is surprised by our godlessness.
The evangelical (those who emphasise the Truth and authority of the Gospels) Anglican
Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen says we are:
“spiritual
anorexics…soothed and made coherent by consumer products, celebrity news, and
never-ending quests for physical perfection.”
(P. 86, The Future of
Jesus)
Jensen is right, much of
modern humanity are “spiritual anorexics” with materialist tendencies – but we
are only anorexic and materialist because no one is feeding us with any
credible spiritual nourishment. It is not as if we have no spiritual hunger –
witness the enormous spiritual outpouring at the turn of the millennia, the huge
popularity of films and books which delve into the spiritual; the successes of
New Age religions; and the growing interest in spiritualism and anyone claiming
to be a clairvoyant or a medium to the next world. This is as it should be in a
world which is so packed with many numinous experiences. I will examine
evidence for the existence of the spiritual in this supposedly solely physical,
phenomenalogical and causal world in a later essay (On the Road to Truth). Here
I argue that we may be spiritually hungry but any “B” Book-based House of God has
nothing to feed us because of the unreliability, incredibility, and downright
lies found in those Books.
THE HOUSE OF GOD IS VENAL,
NOT SPIRITUAL
The House of God, in fact, is
not even spiritual – but venal. It exploits our animal fears of punishment
and/or our animal hopes for physical resurrection in return for money and power.
A congregation brought together by animal fear of death and seeking the Darwinian
reward of physical survival through bodily resurrection is not generated by the
spiritual but the venal. I will argue, and present evidence, that life is as
much a spiritual, as an animal experience and opportunity. But here I argue
that the House of God is not playing its potentially pivotal role in this
process.
VICTIMS OF STOCKHOLM SYNDROME
Many denizens of the various Houses of God claim to
love their brutal gods of the ancient tribes. Pictures of some do seem to show
them to be enraptured – especially “happy-clapping”, devotees of certain
“Christian” evangelical circuses. But is this love, or an attempt to get relief
from fear? Are they, rather than in love with the vicious Hebrew god, instead victims
of the Stockholm Syndrome – where hostages come to “love” their captors (who
have power of life or death over them)?
PROSELYTIZING ZEAL
At the beginning I quoted Aldous Huxley. His
statement that “at least two thirds of
our miseries” were down to “proselytizing
zeal on behalf of religious or political ideas” has been shown to be true
by the history of both politics and religion. Most of our wars have been either
religious or political. It seems for humans that is not enough for us to
believe something to be true, but we need for everyone else to hold it to be
true as well. It is as if life is seen as a giant football game – which is to
be won by our side – for our own greater glory. Truth is not the object for
most religious people – but winning the argument (as it also is for the House
of Disbelief).
Proselytising zeal actually obscures the truth. I have
shown how the “proselytizing zeal” – the desire to recruit their fellows to
their own beliefs – of Jesus’ followers swamped his Truths. I have shown how
faith in incredible “Christian” doctrine and dogma became more important –
faith more praiseworthy than truth – especially the truth of what Jesus
actually said, did, and was. Ideas like virgin birth, the miracles, the
Trinity, and Messianic doctrine – are matters of faith. If you have to believe
in them before you can believe that Jesus brought us “T’ Truths, or believe in
them before you can believe in the existence of a Divine, or before you can
believe that there is a special meaning in life – then that says something
about you but nothing about God, life, or any special meaning of it.
AM I AN ATHEIST?
Does all of the above mean that because I believe
that the House of God is unsound I must necessarily believe that there is no
God? Am I forced to become a denizen of the House of Disbelief? No – I believe
that the House of Disbelief is as unsound as our present Houses of God, and I
will examine the House of Disbelief in an essay of that name.
Just because I believe that
the “g” gods of religion are incredible concoctions by man in his own image
does not mean that I must necessarily believe there is no “G” God. My
experiences in life, and the experiences of some of my friends, has left me
with a knowledge/belief in the Divine, and will attempt to approach Him/Her/Us/Them/It
in another essay.
DO I SUBSCRIBE TO MEANINGLESSNESS?
The same goes for special
meaning in life – just because I believe that the religious model for the special
meaning of life is incredible (a once-only test of a constant stream of new souls)
does not mean that I must believe life has no special meaning.
A SOUND HOUSE OF GOD
I also believe that a sound House would be a good
thing for humanity. A sound House of a rational Divine – “rational” because
rationally deduced from the evident, numinous aspects of life (rather than
private “revelation”). A real House of God built on our spiritual needs rather
than our physical fears – on the evident Truths in what Jesus really said rather
than faith in incredible doctrine concocted from ancient, pre-scientific,
tribal scriptures. A common meeting ground we can visit for some fellowship with
our fellow travellers in an often difficult life; for an experience of the
numinous in an often depressingly mechanistic world; somewhere that rings with
our souls; somewhere we can celebrate our rites of passage. A place where we
can find the spiritual nourishment that we have shown ourselves to be so in
need of. Somewhere where there is:
“a freer
approach to rituals and worship – retaining, for example, a community
celebration of births, marriages and deaths
… so that being a Christian might once more mean being like Christ
himself. And it would mean abandoning the idea that the hall-mark of a true
Christian is doctrinal orthodoxy, in favour of an expression of their faith
which might once more induce others to marvel at ‘how these Christians love
one another’ – the ideal we saw so
powerfully at work in the original Christian community.”
- “The Rise and Decline of
the Christian Empire” P. 347 (Ian
Guthridge, historian and ex Jesuit priest).
A genuinely Christian House of God, rather than the
Judeo/Christian/Pauline, tribal mish-mash we have now. A House where Jesus’ own
trinity of – Love, Forgive, Do – is the only doctrine. A House where the “mind”
part of the human “body, mind and soul” equation is allowed in to search for
the real meaning and purpose of life; where the soul part of the human equation
can grow – evolve. A place where the fear of meaninglessness and death would
dissolve. A place of unity, where the separation “H” Houses have engendered
between humans in the past is no more. A place where all peoples could bring
their Truths, their: “pearls bought at great price” for our mutual enrichment.
Jesus’ teaching of the primacy of love, I hope, would be Christianity’s pearl –
bought at great price. Jesus is a connecting link between Jews, Muslims and
Christians – he was a Jew; he is recognised as an important Muslim prophet; and
he is Christ – the Christian “one anointed by God”. Respected by all, and hopefully
a force for unity?
Am I dreaming? No. There have been several times in
the past when certain places encouraged different civilisations to come
together in an air of toleration – each brought their best to the table and
allowed others to do the same. It was during these times when humanity achieved
its best – for example, the 12th century Muslim/Jewish/Christian scientific
and philosophical communities in al-Andalus (southern, Moorish Spain), the
multi-cultural centre of learning that was ancient Alexandria with its great
library, and the 12th century Norman/Greco/Saracen/Latin Sicily of
the Norman king Roger ll. There were others. It was only when these
civilisations were torn apart by political or religious ideologies that the music
stopped.
THE UNITY OF HUMANITY
Our religious and secular “H” Houses force our separation when there is
in fact none. We are one – all proceeded from the original singularity of energy
and made up of identical atoms manifested from the originally existing energy.
All enlivened by that original energy when life came to matter – or matter to
life. We are all of the Holy Unity. This should be our doctrine – not the Holy
Trinity. There is no such thing as your atoms or my atoms – we swap them with
each other and every other thing – animal, vegetable and mineral – continually.
There are no Christian atoms, Muslim atoms, Hindu atoms, Buddhist atoms, or
Jewish atoms – or even a human atom. Our spirituality, likewise, from the one
source.
Our religions separate us as servants of separate gods. Which one we
believe is determined overwhelmingly by the accident of birth, not by
exhaustive search for Truth. Our secular ideologies – political, national,
economic, and philosophical – also serve to separate us. But we are all of the
One – what happens to others happens to us.
John Donne puts the unity of humanity more poetically:
No man is an island, entire
of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main … any man’s
death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send
to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
– (XVII. MEDITATION.)
We stand on the brink of fully understanding the
universe and taking our place in it, but we can only successfully do so if we
are united at home – on Earth. DNA analysis proves that all modern humans, of
whatever race or religion, are cousins out of
As Hindu classics have it – thou art that. Do not
send to know for whom the bell tolls – it tolls for us all.
The idea of human unity was well expressed by
Baha’u’llah, the Iranian leader of the Baha’i, in an interview with
“That all nations should become one in faith
and all men as brothers; that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons
of men should be strengthened; that diversity of religion should cease, and
differences of race be annulled – what harm is there in this?… Yet so it shall
be; these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the ‘Most Great Peace’ shall come
…Do not you in
– Browne E.G., “A Traveler’s Narrative”
(C.U.Press, 1891) 2:xxxix-xl
Amen.
Graeme Meakin, 2004. (Revised
31st January, 2009.)
Other essays: