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)
It is my
intention to explore life for meaning and purpose. To that end, I am firstly examining
the beliefs of the two institutions who say they have the answers – the House of
God, and the House of Disbelief. In this essay I am examining the House of God,
in the next, the House of Disbelief. In the third essay I will explore without
our “H” Houses
I am examining
these “H” Houses for their truths, to see if they are the “T” Truth. The House of God claims to contain the
Truth, and the House of Disbelief claims there is no Truth – only our truths. In
the introduction to this exploration I discussed the difference between our “t”
truths and the “T” Truth. My quest is for Truth – not for your truth, or to
push my truth – but to hunt for any Truths.
Before inviting
others to embark on this essay’s voyage through the often confused and turbulent
waters of faith and belief, I think it is important to nail one’s colours to
the mast – the whiff of vested interest, and of Huxley’s “proselytizing zeal”, will
always be present.
I had a
conventional, but low-key, Christian upbringing at an Anglican boys-school. Very
little orthodox Christian faith was successfully instilled at school and any skerrick
remaining was demolished at
What is my philosophical
position about life as I stand now – what philosophical label best suits me?
A good question –
everybody who gets out of bed in the morning is a philosopher. Personally, I am
left cold by the beliefs of theism – while I feel there may be a God, I find theism’s
god and model for the meaning and purpose of life – primitive and incredible. As
for atheism, while I find some of its arguments sound, I find its attempts to
explain all of human behaviour in terms of evolutionary theory – ideological and
incomplete. Agnosticism doesn’t suit me because life has left me with too
strong a feeling of special meaning and ultimate purpose. Deism has some appeal
as a label, and I find pantheism logical (the original energy which became the
material universe can only be of the “D” Divine). I admire Jesus, and try to follow
his precepts towards my fellows as often as I can. Maybe you could call me a Christian-Pantheist?
So much for my
philosophical position at the start of this exploration. I like to think I have
an open mind and reserve the right to change it at any time during the course
of these essays.
THE CHRISTIAN HOUSE OF GOD
I am examining
the Christian House of God because it is the House of God with which I am most
familiar. But, I suspect, much of what is discussed here will be applicable to
all Houses of God founded on a “B” Book supposedly written by God.
First, some
people will be wanting to ask me certain questions before joining me on my exploration:
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. Many equate religion with God, feeling that to
dispose of religion is to dispose of God – and this essay asks if this is fair.
Did God design the House of God, does God really dwell within?
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 in times of personal crisis. It has
also set standards of moral behaviour valuable to the development, and
continuance, of civil society.
I presume to examine
the House of God because it is my observation that it is failing in the above
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 of the people 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). Attendances have been falling for years and churches are shutting,
being turned into homes and restaurants everywhere you look. Weddings are
increasingly being celebrated by secular ceremonies in gardens, funerals in
funeral parlours, and christenings at backyard barbeques. Neighbourhood centres, secular charities, state hospitals, and
government agencies have largely taken over former Church roles.
A FACILE MEANING
IS MEANINGLESSNESS’ GREATEST ALLY
I also presume to
examine the House of God because it seems in many ways to be meaninglessness’
greatest ally. Many who throw out religion’s special meaning of life (a one-off
test for eternal punishment or reward) then throw out special meaning
altogether – adopting personal meanings, if any. In a rational age of
scientific enlightenment, religion’s model for life (salvation) was shown to be
irrational. Thinking people were driven away from the very idea of “T” Truth by
religion’s irrational “t” truths.
THEISM GENERATES
ATHEISM
As education
(especially scientific) was available more widely through society from the
nineteenth century onwards, more people became aware that religion’s dogmas and
doctrines were incredible – its “g” god (a brutal male figure from ancient
tribal imaginings) became, not just inadequate, but the generator of atheism. For
example, an exposure to religion in the early family situation generated some
of our most influential atheists – 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 stern religious upbringing in the hands of a strictly religious
aunt. All of these, and other influential atheists, have spread the gospel
according to meaninglessness as a reaction to the incredabilities of religion.
FUNDAMENTALISM
I also presume to
examine the House of God also because dangerous fundamentalism is on the rise.
Their percentage in the House of God – from the above 2004 survey is:
Assemblies of God up 20%;
“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, Muslim, and Christian – not only cherish the notion
that God will come to reign on Earth following a holocaust scenario where
millions suffer, but many think that this is a scenario which they can – even must
– help bring about! As fundamentalist numbers go up in percentage terms, and the
percentage of thinking parishioners go down, the House of God’s congregation around
the world is being reduced to a rump of scared, weird, little guys – driven by
hate and fear, rather 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). Jensen is a strict Bible-believing evangelical who
opposes ordaining female 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 –
Humanity is in a
precarious state when our governments are run, or strongly influenced by, fundamentalists
and evangelicals whose “t” truths include wrathful gods. Whose beliefs include that
Armageddon is destined; that they are will go to heaven during a rapture while
men women and children “left behind” will be swimming in blood – because it
says so in a “B” Book written by God!? We are in a precarious state because our
technological evolution is way ahead of our spiritual evolution – we have atom
bombs but stone-age gods. Religions are not the drivers of our spiritual
evolution, as they should be, but more like the biggest block in the road. They
are mostly not driven by spiritual motives at all – more like Darwinian, animal
motives of desire for bodily survival and the fear of punishment – the old
carrot and stick that has been used by successful dictatorships since human
society began.
THE BLOODY
HISTORY OF RELIGION
I also presume to
examine religion because of its murderous 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 invasion of Britain by a Norman pretender 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 have been many murderous inter-denominational religious wars
in Europe (the Catholic-Huguenots battles in
So, in summary, the
reasons why I presume to examine the House of God are: its failure in traditional societal roles; its
incredible meaning for life is driving people to meaninglessness and its
dangers; brutal fundamentalism and evangelicalism have taken control; it is a block
in the road to our spiritual evolution; its history is murderous (as our future
with it in charge is bleak).
BUT HOW ABOUT THE
GOOD PEOPLE IN THE HOUSE OF GOD?
Isn’t this all a
bit harsh – how about the good people in the House of God? There remain some
good people within the House of God who are seeking the Truth and genuine
spiritual understanding rather than trying to convert people to their truths
for their own religion’s greater power. 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 (“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 the Truth, rather
than seeking to sell religious truths, but with the growth of fundamentalist
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 Truth-seeking
people are winning. Trying to win an argument rather than seeking the Truth,
trying to gain power over parishioners through pedaling fear and prejudice,
trying to gain some control over life’s caprices, trying to attain eternal
animal salvation/survival – still accurately describes the purpose of the majority
in 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, inveigling praise and
worship, but because to finally approach God may be to finally approach the One,
the All – the universe – our unity with everything and everybody.
Religion has been the greatest force for our separation, not unity. Every
despot has contrived and maintained our separation from our fellows by national,
political, ethnic – and especially religious – means. Separation from each
other, from our common needs and purpose, has been the root cause of all of the
conflicts listed above – and more. So, while there doesn’t “have to be a God”,
life leads me to suspect that there is a “D” Divine, a mystery to approach
which may amaze us. But whatever we find, our unity is a fact, we all and
everything came from the original energy which became matter, and an honest
attempt to find a credible Divine may flow on to finding a rational ultimate
purpose and credible special meaning in life – an important counter for meaninglessness,
materialism, separation and the dangers they hold for our sustainability as a
species.
In an effort to
approach 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 purpose, design, and fabric. Let’s examine the purpose,
design and fabric of the Christian House of God.
PURPOSE
The original purpose of the Jesus movement was about
keeping alive the memory of Christ – and his radical teachings of the primacy
of love over hate; of forgiveness over revenge; of doing unto others what you
would have them do unto you. These were radical new ideas compared to the old
scriptures’ primitive teachings of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
“Radical” because Jesus was calling for love even for your enemies (saying anybody
can love their family); forgiveness because even your enemies were God’s
children (God’s sun shone upon them and rain felon them too); and Jesus was
calling for actively doing good (rather than merely refraining from
doing bad). So what happened to the admirable Jesus movement?
It became a religion, it was institutionalised as an
“H” House – the official religion of the
Firstly, 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 and the death of loved ones. These are not
insubstantial existential angsts and humanity, with its unique consciousness
among the animal kingdom of mortality, is deserving – indeed, in need of – a
little comfort to keep functioning. But the Christian House of God harbours a
wrathful god of an ancient desert tribe – a brutal male god, out of a hard land,
at a brutal time. A god that gives love only conditionally – when certain rules
are met – and metes out punishment for eternity when they are not. A House that
is as potentially discomforting as comforting, a House that learned to cleverly
use discomforting devices like sin, guilt, and the devil in an effort to keep
the flock afraid of God’s wrath (see the above quote from Jensen) – and passing
through the turnstiles. In this way the House of God became populated by the
credulous and fearful – all others were denied the comfort of a credible, all-loving
God and a credible special meaning of life.
The second
purpose of the House of God identified above was control. Control over life’s dangers
– over our world’s seeming capriciousness. The House of God offers control
through its influence with an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and interventionist
god. This control comes from claiming to know what “He” wants – animal
sacrifice, praise, worship, and fear of “His” wrath. The House of God offers control
of life through its power over a wrathful God by knowing how to administer to
his masculine vanities and needs.
This brings us to
the third purpose of the House of God – power. 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 – any violence is approved because we are growing the number
of his followers. Increasing the praise he loves, the worship he needs, the
size of his one true House. It’s as if life is one big football game to be won
at all costs for your one, true, team. Some of the worst violence humanity has committed
(and still commits) has been in the name of God – OK because it is for God’s
greater glory. Violence between competing Houses of God – even between
denominations of the one House of God – is of the most bloodthirsty kind. Witness
the numerous “Christian” religious wars and crusades of
DESIGN
In its earliest days the design of the Jesus movement
was that of a community of equals regardless of gender or class. 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 also 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 – and the beatings, stonings and
brutal deaths of many early Christians. Going against the established Roman
gods and the vested interests of the
Instead of overthrowing the money-changer’s tables the
design of the Judeo-Christian-Paulinian-Constantinian House of God came to be
about bigger and better tables.
FABRIC
The spiritual
fabric of the House of God is admirable – walls of Christian fellowship and a
roof of Christian charity. And the physical fabric is beautiful – the
architecture, the art, the music – beautiful to the point of being inspired. Quite
so, but unfortunately the fabric is deeply flawed, its charity and fellowship
failing as discussed, because its foundation stone is unreliable. The House of
God is founded upon the Bible and depends on its integrity. The Bible is a
capital “B” Book because it is “Holy” – written by (or at the very least,
inspired 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 Bible offers certainty in uncertain times. All is
certain, black and white – written by God, in a Book. But such certainty is
only available to those who can suspend their rationality – 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 – “sin…Satan…Adam…the
fall” – all to be believed, rather than scientific evidence which points to an
entirely different Genesis. We know science is correct, we use the products of
its truths every day, but religion says it is incorrect when it disagrees with
the Bible.
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.”
-
from, The Sins of Scripture, John Shelby Spong, P. 16.
You can see why
the Bible is the foundation stone of the House of God.
Christians could argue
that Jesus is the foundation of their House of God, but the Gospels contain the
only record of what Jesus said and did. Whichever way you look at it, the foundation
of the House of God is the Bible. The integrity of any House is dependant upon
the integrity of its foundations.
It’s time to
examine :
THE HOLY BIBLE
Is the Bible
the word of God, or, at the very least, inspired by God? Let’s look at it book
by book to see if it resembles the word of God? I will be using the New International and the New Revised Standard versions of the
Bible.
THE OLD TESTAMENT
Some,
supposedly more sophisticated, members of the House of God don’t put much
weight on the Old Testament anymore (writing verbose apologies for it which
boil down to saying it is metaphorical for deeper spiritual meanings) but we
have to examine it in this exercise because the kneebone of more modern Christian
doctrines of the House of God are connected to the thighbone of ancient Old
Testament myths and stories – for example, the pivotal Christian doctrine of salvation
is connected to the Garden of Eden myth of Adam, Eve, and original sin. We
can’t just examine the Christian New Testament – we have to begin at the Old
Testament scriptures because so much of the New Testament is based on the Old.
The Old
Testament is the writings of the Hebrews – an ancient grouping of Semitic
tribes in the area we now call the
“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)
How did these
disparate writings “somehow” come to be seen as the word of God? Is it because they
are always correct, irrefutably wise – the infallible, “D” Divine, “T” Truth?
Let’s see.
THE PENTATEUCH/TORAH
The first five Books in the Old Testament: Genesis;
Exodus; Leviticus; Numbers; Deuteronomy; are also known as the Pentateuch. They
form the Torah – the “law”, “teaching”, “way” of the Jewish people. They are contain
creation myths, early history, and outline the laws which form the basis of a covenant
between the Jewish people and their god.
GENESIS
The first of these Books, Genesis, contains an
explanation for how everything came to exist. According to Genesis, everything
in the universe was created by God in six days, who then needed a rest on the
seventh. God created light and dark, night and day, sky and earth, the seas and
the fishes, the dry land and the vegetation, the sun by day and the stars at
night, the birds and the bees, cattle and creeping things.
Then God created humankind to have dominion over all:
“in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (1:27)
and sent them forth to multiply – to “fill the earth and subdue it”. Earth was
placed at the centre of the Universe – the sun and planets revolved around it.
For beauty and inventiveness, Genesis is definitely
on a par with all other creation myths – like the Australian Aborigine’s
“Rainbow Serpent”, for example.
TWO DIFFERENT ACCOUNTS OF THE CREATION
The Bible, the word of God, then proceeds to give
another account of the creation. In the first version men and women were made
at the same time by God on the sixth day, but the second version says woman was
made after man – when God realised man needed a companion (made out of one of his
ribs, plucked from him when he was asleep!) So page 1 and already we have “the
word of God” disagreeing with itself? Which version is true, and which is
false?
OR ARE BOTH ACCOUNTS WRONG?
Thanks to the discoveries of science we know that both
versions of the beginning in Genesis are wrong. Galileo was the first recorded
scientist to challenge the Bible’s account with his findings from the
developing sciences of astronomy and cosmology. He was repaid with life in
prison by the
But mistakes in the Bible don’t stop with its cosmology.
WRONG AGAIN
As well as misinformation about the Earth, sun, moon
and stars, Genesis also gets it wrong about the creation of life – the
sea-creatures and birds all created on day five, and the animals of the Earth
(including man and woman) and plants – on day six. Again science tells us this
is not the truth. Geology has unearthed a fossil record of lifeforms from
simple to complex, and biology has discovered that life evolved over many
millions of years into the multifarious forms we now take. Yes – “we” – it can
be demonstrated empirically that humans are related to plants and animals because
we share similar DNA (for example, we have 65% similar DNA to bananas and 98%
similar DNA to chimpanzees).
HOW CAN THE WORD OF GOD BE WRONG?
Again, those who believe the Bible to be the word of
God have to ask themselves how could God get it so wrong? And, the next
question is – if the Bible is wrong here, is it wrong in other places? Fundamentalists
nip this sort of dangerous speculation in the bud by convincing themselves that
the universe is only just over 6000 years old (calculated by Archbishop James
Ussher in 1650 added up all the begatting in the Bible and coming up with the
figure of the world’s beginning – 23rd October 4004 B.C.!) 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 that this is the real age of the Universe? And it is not a
matter of fundamentalists “t” truths versus our “t” truths – we know that
biology is correct because it works – we prove it right by successfully using
the products of its “T” Truths every day. Even fundamentalists use the products
of biology’s Truths in their foods and medicines. You can’t deny science on the
one hand, and use it successfully on the other.
Beyond reasonable doubt the author of the Bible’s creation
stories was ignorant of cosmology and biology. The creation stories are just
that – “stories” – myths, “t” truths written by pre-scientific man, not the “T”
Truth written by God.
SHOULD BE READ AS METAPHOR AND ALLEGORY?
But supposedly sophisticated residents of the House
of God would be bored by all this, stating that Genesis should be read as metaphor
and allegory. However, some key doctrine of the “modern” House of God rests on
a belief of the Garden of Eden story – it still accepts as true the concept of
original sin, allegorised in Adam and Eve defying god by consuming fruit from
the tree of knowledge and being banished from the Garden of Eden – condemned to
mortality, work and painful childbirth. A literal belief in this mythical “Sin”
was the cornerstone of Paul’s (the father of the modern Christian House of God)
beliefs and doctrines about Jesus dying to wash away our sins. Salvation – our redemption
back into
KNOWLEDGE VS. FAITH
The Serpent’s tree story is also allegory for
something else. The tree was called “the tree of knowledge” and Adam and Eve’s
action of eating its fruit was a metaphor for choosing knowledge over faith –
reality over the received word. This is a big sin as far as the House of God is
concerned. Valuing knowledge over faith – seeking for the “T” Truth, rather
than settling for the House of God’s “t” truth – the beginning of the end for
the House of God. The Enlightenment, when it arrived later in human history,
was based on this choosing of knowledge over blind faith, and it marked the
beginning of the end for religion’s power over Western civilisation – because its
doctrines are incredible. But does it mark the end of God? That is what these
essays intend to find out.
NOAH’S
Next in Genesis we have Noah’s
“The
Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great on the earth, and every
inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” (Genesis 6:5)
So God decided to drown the lot – including all the
animals – keeping two of every species to start again with (and Noah’s family).
If you add up the biblical cubits the
Two of everything: birds and bats, hippos and horses,
beetles and butterflies. Every living thing – including those indigenous to
continents and lands which were then unknown:
The fear of the murderous Old Testament god who was
prepared to drown innocent living things must have done strange things to their
brains. And there are many of them out there – in
But wait, there’s more to Genesis – next comes the
story of
EXODUS
Exodus is the next Book of the Old Testament. We move
to
The Hebrew tribes are then led by Moses across the
desert to
“He
consecrated the people and they washed their clothes. And he said to the
people, ‘Prepare for the third day; do not go near a woman.’ “ (Exodus
19:14-15)
Dirty things these women! How did the women manage to
avoid themselves? But Moses managed it and gets the Ten Commandments from his
god – supposedly the “G” God – which proscribe some things (like murder) but not
useful things like slavery and ethnic cleansing. Moses also gets social laws from
this god which cement revenge into place (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a
tooth), laws about sexual relations, altars, festivals, blood sacrifices,
tabernacles and Sabbaths, etc., etc.. And laws about slaves, even selling your
daughter into slavery:
“When
a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as male slaves do. If
she does not please her master, who designated her for himself, then he shall
let her be redeemed.” (21:7,8)
And beating your slave:
“ ‘When a slaveowner strikes a male or female
slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished.
But if the slave survives for a day or two, there is no punishment; for the
slave is the owner’s property.’ ”(21:20-21)
So, straight from the mouth of God, we get: slavery
is OK – and it is OK to beat them savagely with a rod? Not so savagely that
they die straight away, mind you – although if they die after two days it’s
fine. What type of person 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 and prolonged cruelty
involved in stoning a bull to death?
Bear in mind these are supposedly the actual quoted
words of “G” God as recounted by Moses? These commandments and laws form the
basis of Torah – the underpinnings of the covenant between the Jews and their
god.
And while Moses is away receiving this, the tribes
make themselves a golden calf to worship. God was jealous so Moses got the sons
of Levi and:
“said
to them, “This is what the Lord, the God of
Let’s see if we have this right – Moses, fresh from
receiving the ten commandments – surely the most important of which is “Thou
Shalt Not Kill” – sets about killing 3,000 of his own brethren? But “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 the murderers “blessed” because of their ability to commit pitiless
atrocities against their brothers, friends and neighbours. Exodus later says
this god is:
“a
God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving
iniquity and transgression and sin..” (34: 6-7)
So, from the start of the Bible we have a god who is
inconsistent, a god capable of anything – “merciful and slow to anger” – but,
as shown by the above episode, quick to anger and merciless at the same time;
“faithful” yet not to his chosen people whom he had slaughtered – in an instant
out of jealousy for a golden statue?
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE IDEA OF FATWA
Here we see the beginning of the idea of a Fatwa – killing is OK, if in
the name of a jealous god. Now that’s just got to be “G” God – hasn’t it? Or is
this just another “g” god invented by man in his own image – brutal and violent
– a god constructed by the officers of a religion to keep the flock in order –
much like all the other gods ever invented by man?
This pitiless “g” 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).
21:17
Whoever curses father or mother shall be put to death.
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
Is this the “Lord”, a “G” God, or just the murderous,
vengeful “g” god of some desert tribes?
Let’s look further.
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.”
Dirty things these women – especially if they give
birth to another woman!
“If
she gives birth to a daughter, for two weeks the woman will be unclean.”
(12:2&5)
The word of God? Got to be if it’s in the Bible!?
And more from the Hebrew god on slavery:
“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!?
And what’s this bit about votive offerings to God – human
sacrifice?
“Nothing
that a person owns that has been devoted to destruction for the Lord, be it human
or animal, or inherited landholding, may be redeemed…no human beings who
have been devoted to destruction can be ransomed; they shall be put to death.”
(27:28-29)
NUMBERS
More wanderings and god-sanctioned murder and
destruction.
More sexism: (5:11-31) – A man can test (?!) a wife
just because he suspects she may have been with another man. But the other man
does not get tested. Nor a husband if the wife suspects him.
Again we have a fearsome and jealous god:
“The
Lord your God you shall fear…because the Lord your God… is a jealous God. The
anger of the Lord your God would be kindled against you and he would destroy
you from the face of the earth. ” (6:13-15)
And violent: (15:32) – Sabbath-breaker stoned to
death with god’s approval.
And ethnic cleansing (21:3):
“The
Lord listened to
And violent and jealous at once. After some
Israelites bowed to the god Baal:
“The Lord said to Moses, Take all the
chiefs of the people and impale them in the sun before the Lord…” (25:4)
Even violent towards women and children – and
approving of rape:
[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.
So, is the Biblical god your God? Is the Bible the
word of God, or inspired by God? Does the reveal anything about God, or just about
the people whose god this is?
Somewhere here must be the real God? Let’s try the
next Book:
DEUTERONOMY
God instructs more slaying of men, women and
children. More laws, and clean and unclean food laws. Joshua succeeds Moses,
who dies within sight of Promised Land.
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)
THE TRUTH OR A TRUTH?
Deuteronomy is the last book of the Torah – the written
laws and rules which form the basis of the covenant between the Hebrew tribes
and their god. Are these the words of God or the words of man – the Divine “T”
Truth or human “t” truths?
WHAT SORT OF GOD IS THE GOD OF MOSES?
What sort of god have we found in the Bible so far? We
have found a parochial god – who made a covenant with just one, chosen group of
tribes, the rest of humanity suitable for ethnic cleansing and enslavement. A
brutal god – who endorsed the killing and rape of women and children. A
primitive god – who wanted animals sacrificed to him. A sexist god – who held
women to be unclean. A jealous god – who would slaughter even his own chosen
people if they made a golden calf to worship. A vengeful god – who would cast
people into hell forever in vengeance. A mindless god – who would drown the entire
animal and human population of the world.
Is this god “D” Divine, or human? Is this the real
“G” God, or a “g” god constructed by the elder males of some pre-scientific,
semi-nomadic tribesmen – who were eking out a tough existence in a hard land at
a brutal time? A brutal god to fear – a god to keep the flock from straying.
The question which most needs to be asked is: “is this your God?”
“Sophisticated” believers, think it ridiculous to
take the Old Testament literally, but it is worth remembering that the writers
of the New Testament Gospels did – they believed the Scriptures to be the word
of God – maybe even Jesus did?
IS THIS PRIMITIVE GOD, JESUS’ GOD?
Was this Jesus’ God? Impossible to know, because the
Gospellers constantly put the words of this god and these “S” Scriptures into
the mouth of Jesus in an effort to authorise him in the eyes of his fellow Jews
for proselytising purposes. We may get closer to a personal answer to this
question later – when we examine Jesus, and the New Testament.
I feel that the god the Bible has shown us so far,
reveals more about religion than it does about the existence of any “G” God –
religions “t” truths, rather than the “T” Truth. And more about the nature of our
self than about the nature of any God.
So let’s move on and examine the rest of the Old
Testament. Now for some history.
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 surely have pleased the
“Lord” – every man, woman, child and donkey – that’s “D” Divine work, surely?
Then they “devoted” more ethnic cleansing to the Lord
:
8:25 – The 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 panic and pain those horses
suffered, and for how long, after being left lying on the ground ham-strung? And
something about: “Inasmuch as you do it unto one of these, the least of my
creatures, you do it unto me” – comes to mind.
Seen your God yet? Maybe in the next Book?
JUDGES
More fighting, slaughtering, thumb- and toe-lopping
of the Canaanites and others by the Israelites – God’s chosen people. God keeps
his part of the covenant with the Israelites, giving their enemies up to them
for slaughter. But Joshua dies, and eventually all his generation – those who
knew what god had done for his chosen people. The next generation, in their
ignorance began to worship other gods – like Baal – and “the anger of the Lord
was kindled against them”. There was much fighting with the neighbours with
victory and slaughter passing to and fro – eventually the Midianites prevailed over the Israelites and God said it
was because they had “given reverence to the god of the Amorites”. Gideon
emerges as a mighty warrior and routs the countless Midianites with only 300
men (but with god on his side). Gideon eventually dies and the Israelites
relapse into their unfaithful ways once more – worshipping other gods. More Divine
pay-back by domination by their enemies – the Philistines this time (you think
they’d learn?). Along comes Sampson – who is victorious against the Philistines
(with god on his side). Then Delilah cuts off his hair (the source of his
strength) and the Philistines gouge his eyes out – but Samson brings down the
house with a final command performance of his strength.
And on it goes, ending with a charming tale of an
internal conflict within the Israelite tribes which is settled by killing man,
woman, and child of a town called Jabesh-gilead. The virgins of Jabesh-gilead
were harvested and given to the men of the Benjamin tribe of
All up, it is a long warning to the Israelites not to
abandon, or cross, their god. Winning against the odds is possible if god is on
your side, but woe betide you if you cast shy glances at the gods of others.
RUTH
A gentle story of Oprah (so, that’s where she got the
name from?), Ruth, Naomi, and Boaz – and the birth of Obed in
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 love that “Almighty”?
And on, and on, we go – wading through gore:
2 SAMUEL
Here we hamstring some more horses for the Lord (8:4).
We learn also that polygamy is fine with God – this
to King David from the very mouth of God: “I
gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom”
(12:8). Abraham, Jacob, and Solomon were all polygamists with God’s approval.
Of course, women were not allowed to have more than one husband.
We engage in more battles and bloodbaths. We meet
We find out that the Israelites’ god was fickle in his
support for his chosen people – 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.
We learn that Solomon was a bigamist on a grand scale
:”Among his wives were seven hundred
princesses and three hundred concubines.” (1 Kings 11:3). Solomon fell out
of favour with God – not for his bigamy but because some of his wives were “foreign women” (11:1) who “will surely incline your heart to follow
their gods.” (11:2) – a jealous god who would permit polygamy on a grand
scale, but not the worship of other gods.
The historical figures of Cyrus, Darius, and Xerxes appear.
The Jewish people get liberated from the Babylonians by the Persians and rebuild
the
The prophets appear. 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 this conundrum many loose faith in
the idea of God – and, often, belief in any special meaning (quite common,
If a supposedly good, omnipotent, interventionist god
does not intervene positively for good people, and negatively for bad people –
allowing good and bad to happen randomly to good and bad alike – does god exist
at all? Further, if there is an omnipotent god, is he perhaps evil? I will
examine “the problem of evil” in more depth in the next essay which examines the
House of Disbelief .
But, back to Job, who 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 splendour I could not do such
things” (31:23).
The Bible dodges the deeper philosophical question raised
by Job’s admission – of what is real goodness? Surely, a person who does not
believe in God, but is good naturally, is better and more deserving than Job – who
was only good “for fear”? Religion
has always been about conditional goodness – being good to avoid hell or to achieve
physical resurrection in heaven. In the New Testament, as we shall see below,
Paul considers the idea of true goodness – but concludes faith (believing
incredible doctrine) is better than good deeds!?
Job succeeds only in enraging his god with his doubts
and complaints. This god then threatens him with Behemoth and Leviathan (which
never existed) and scares the shit out of him. So Job apologised and praised
his god again and got his enemies reduced and his fortunes restored and lived a
long and fruitful life.
The Book of Job is yet more invention – designed by
the religious fathers to answer one of the most commonly expressed doubts about
god. They have no answers, so elect for the usual punishment or reward tactics
– carrot or the stick – believe and get rewarded, doubt and suffer. Works every
time when you are building a religion.
And now we arrive at the next section of the Old
Testament, which turns praise of a needy god into an art form.
PSALMS
Deliverance from enemies, thanksgiving, praise,
flattery, longing, denunciation, vengeance, comfort, judgement, punishment,
victory – the supplications of the powerless
Psalms are largely prayers in the form of poems and
songs. They pray for deliverance from enemies and from the travails of life – and
offer praise and worship as inducement. The Psalms express joy, thanksgiving, anger,
despair, sadness, guilt and doubt. They are the prayers of a supposedly elect
people who were frequently defeated by their enemies, the prayers of the
powerless to call God’s wrath down upon their enemies. They call for judgement
and punishment of enemies, and deliverance from them.
The Psalms try to curry favour from a needy and vain
god through praise and worship. How needy do we imagine God to be that he wants
our worship, how vain that he needs our praise? How stupid do we think God is that
we feel “He” could possibly be fooled by it?
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. Would an omniscient Divine believe our self-interested flattery;
could an omnipotent God be so desperately needy of praise that he actually
created us to meet these pathetic needs?
THE GOSPELS LIFT SOME WORDS FROM PSALMS
Psalm 22 has the very words and deeds that Mark and
Matthew ascribe to Jesus on the cross, and the actions of his executioners:
“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.”
Psalm
22: (1-18)
Luke and John impute different words to Jesus. Some
like to think that the Old Testament proves the New Testament true – and vice
versa. More likely the Gospellers lifted Old Testament words and imputed them
to Jesus – to get Scriptural authority for their version of Jesus? Prophecies
were also allegedly fulfilled in Jesus’ actions. We will see more of this
process later.
While the Psalms are largely one long exercise in
inveigling God, there is some beauty:
“By the rivers of
when we
remembered
There on the poplars
we hung our
harps …
And the usual Old Testament revenge, blood, guts and
hate:
“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?
PROVERBS
There is beauty and wisdom in the maxims that make up
Proverbs:
“Happy are those who find wisdom,
And those who get understanding,
For her income is better than silver,
And her revenue is better than gold.” (3:13-14)
If we followed the wise maxims of Solomon (and
others) in Proverbs the world would be a better place:
“Make no friends with those given to anger,
And do not associate with hotheads,
Or
you may learn their ways
And
entangle yourself in a snare.” (22:24-25)
If these are not the very words of God, most of them
seem that they could have been inspired by God?
But then we revert to the usual fear tactics – even
lauding fear as the beginning of knowledge and wisdom? :
“The
fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (1:7)
In my experience, the funk that fear produces is generally
the end of knowledge and wisdom. Fear of a brutal god is why fundamentalists
believe in Adam and Eve; Noah in his impossible
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 Ecclesiastes manages to find some beautiful words
about the human condition – words which still strike a chord with us today :
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)
Turn, turn, turn.
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 then on to some ghastly sexism:
ISAIAH
“The
Lord will wash away the filth of the women of
How could this be the word of God, or inspired by God?
What sort of person could believe this? These, and many other words in the
Bible, make me embarrassed to be a man.
JEREMIAH
More 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
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?
MORE PROPHETS OF DOOM
Daniel; Hosea; Joel; Amos; Obadiah; Jonah (and the
whale); Micah; Nahum; Habakkuk; Zephaniah; Haggai; Zechariah.
These prophets were writing in times of great
insecurity, times of internecine warfare with neighbours, and around the time
of the Jewish defeat and captivity in
THE CARROT AND THE STICK
The prophets constantly try to control the masses by
wielding the stick of a brutal god, and dangling the carrot of this god’s favour.
His power was theirs to command because of their special relationship – a covenant
– with “Him”. But the masses seemed always ready to backslide, to be
unfaithful, to worship other gods (like Baal) of the many surrounding nature religions.
They must have been tempted, after all, they were often defeated by their
neighbours – like the Assyrians, Persians, and Babylonians – maybe the neighbours’
gods were stronger? Eventually, they were not only beaten but taken into Babylonian
captivity – their omnipotent god’s temple destroyed.
The prophets blamed Jewish defeat and the destruction
of the
A STRAYING FLOCK IS BAD FOR BUSINESS
The straying of the flock is the worst thing that can
happen to the business that is religion – a business that depends entirely on
the power which resides within the hearts and minds of men. The executives of
that business, the church officers, have the greatest vested interest. Religions
may start with inspiration and/or revelation, but invariably devolve into a
story of the struggle of the vested interest of the priest classes to maintain
their personal power, status and prestige. Such status is usually based on
their knowledge of, and influence over, a powerful god. The history of the
Judeo-Christian religions is no different. Times were hard, and a hard and
fearsome god was needed to keep the people in awe and under control – but a god
who could be controlled himself, usually by meeting his very human need for praise
and worship.
WHERE IS THE GOD OF LOVE?
There is a god of love in the Old Testament, but you
would need a strong torch and a cut lunch to find “Him” – and, if found, there
is invariably a spike in his tail:
“a God…abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness,
keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin,
yet by no means clearing the guilty,
but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the
children
and the children’s children,
to the third and fourth generation.”
Exodus
(34: 6, 7).
In other words, god loves you – but stuff up and he
knows where you live, and where your kids (and their kids, and their kids) go
to school!
So the modus operandi of the prophets trying to keep
their power intact – even when the god they control fails the people – is
always to point out that the various defeats and punishments inflicted on the
Jews (God’s chosen people, after all) were as a result of his people not
worshipping him properly, and/or because they had been unfaithful to him –
broken their special covenant with god by worshiping Canaanite gods. It can’t
have been because the Jewish god was weak or, heaven forbid, non-existent! If
worshipped properly, their truly omnipotent God will forgive his chosen people
and return them to their rightful, ascendant place above their enemies and
restore their god’s
But in the real world the Israelites had many more conquerors
to endure after returning from captivity in
The last Book in the Protestant version of the Bible
is:
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 the usual trampling, burning and the gnashing of enemy teeth
– the Jewish god will be eventually triumphant and his chosen people leaping
like released calves.
But the Old Testament only halts here for some – others
believe God wrote more yet.
THE APOCRYPHAL/DEUTEROCANONICAL BOOKS
These books number 18 in total – from Tobit, to 4
Maccabees – none of which are recognised as the word of God by Protestants. The
12 Books from Tobit to 2 Maccabees are included in Roman Catholic, Greek and
Russian Orthodox Bibles. The 4 Books from 1 Esdras to 3 Maccabees are included
in the Greek and Russian Orthodox Bibles (and in the appendix to the Latin
Vulgate). 2 Esdras is included only in the Slavonic Bible (and the Vulgate
appendix). 4 Maccabees only appears in the appendix to the Greek Bible.
So those who agree that God wrote the Bible disagree
over how much of it God actually wrote! I’m technically a Protestant so I can dodge
reading the lot. Phew!
CONCLUSION: THE OLD TESTAMENT – THE WORD OF
GOD?
The Old Testament
scriptures did not descend from the heavens on the wings of a snow-white dove.
It is a compilation of the writings of many men (none by woman – quickly
apparent from reading it) made over a long period of time that, according to the
Oxford History of the Bible, “somehow came to be regarded as
scripture.” “S” Scripture for most – the word of God. But are the “S” Scriptures
the word of “G” God, do they represent the “T” Truth – or are they just the “t”
truths of one group of people? Well, let’s see, would an omniscient, infallible
God write:
INCORRECT SCIENCE
The Bible contains incorrect science – everything
supposedly created in 6 days; the planets other than Earth formed on the fourth
day; the animals of the sea and air created on the fifth day; the animals of
the dry land on the sixth. Woman was created after man, because god saw man needed
a hand (according to one of the two different versions of the beginning recorded
in Genesis). Is this the infallible word of an omniscient “G” God or the
attempt of an ancient people to explain how the world came to exist without the
aid of modern sciences like astrology, cosmology, and biology – sciences we have
proven to be true by using the products of their truths daily. If the Bible is
the word of God, “He” is not omniscient. In fact, science resembles more the
word of God, being based on mathematics – the language the universe was written
in.
UNRELIABLE HISTORY
The Old Testament also contains incorrect history.
Jewish archaeologists have found Biblical history to be dubious at best, fabricated
at worst, and politically inspired all the time. Israeli scholars (Israel
Finkelstein, the director of the Nadler Institute of Archaeology at Tel Aviv
University and Neil Asher Silberman, director of historical interpretation for
the Ename Centre of Public Archaeology in Belgium and writer of several books,
including : “Christianity, Judaism, and
the War for the
“Its
finds have revolutionised the study of
early
- Finkelstein
and Silberman, (“The Bible Unearthed”. P.3)
“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.”
-
Finkelstein and Silberman, (ibid. P.17)
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 (ibid. P.
23)
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.”
- Quoted in 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.”
This recent Jewish archaeology has found that
The Bible, so far, looks to be mainly “t” truths, but
are there any “T” Truths in the Old Testament? How about:
THE COMMANDMENTS
The Old Testament does contain social and moral laws
like the Ten Commandments which were essential for a society growing in size
and evolving from a tribal and semi-nomadic existence to a more settled,
agrarian one. But, like the story of Noah’s
And there are plenty of humane laws that we observe
today which were left out of the commandments – like slavery. 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 – the pages of his book are somewhat spittle-flecked – he
does have a good point. And, further to Hitchen’s point, the Bible’s god not
only does not proscribe certain things but in fact approves of them – so long
as they are done by his chosen tribe to outsiders. Would the one, true God of
all the Universe be so parochial – be just god of the twelve tribes, every
other person suitable for slavery and ethnic cleansing?
DID THE AUTHORS OF THE SCRIPTURES THINK THEY WERE
WRITING THE WORDS OF GOD?
The Old Testament is the story of one people and the
all too human god they created to explain the world. It does not resemble, even
a little bit, the story of humanity written by the God of the universe. But, that
they were writing the word of God was never claimed by the many Jewish authors of
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 “S” 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)
That the Bible was “God’s Truth” – the word of God –
was only claimed later during the building of the House of God – and it became
its foundations. So, if the House of God’s is built on myths, concocted history,
borrowed laws, and inveigling prayers and songs to a needy, vain, jealous god –
is that House sound? Does the House of God house the “T” Truth, or just things
some people wished were true – just one people’s “t” truths? Does it house “G”
God, or a parochial, shockingly violent, vain, jealous, needy, sexist,
pro-slavery, ethnic cleansing, homophobic, cruel to dumb animals “g” god?
He appears to be the latter, a totally human creation
– and a “d” dud, to boot. He constantly let down the Jewish tribes. The Jewish
tribes have contributed to humanity scientists, musicians, artists, educators,
doctors, and other talented people out of proportion to their numbers – but the
god their pre-scientific ancestors created was a failure. The Jews were
defeated in ancient times by all comers: enslaved by the Egyptians; dominated by
the Assyrians and Persians; beaten and held captive by the Babylonians; subjugated
by Alexander’s Greeks; defeated three times by the Romans and incorporated into
their pagan Empire. Even the Jewish God’s
“condescended
to touch the world”
(John Dickson, Jesus, A Short Life, Pp. 91-92)
was demolished twice – firstly by Nebuchadnezzar then,
for all time, by the Romans. The Jewish people were eventually dispersed from
their “promised land” – in an extended Diaspora – out into foreign lands where
they suffered numerous pogroms and eventually the Nazi Holocaust, surely the
most heinous crime ever inflicted on any people. The Jewish god was either not
omnipotent or non-existent. The Jewish religious leaders, of course, had to
insist that God had forsaken them because they didn’t get their religion right
– they didn’t give their god what he wanted – it was not god’s fault, but
theirs. Guilt thus became an integral part of the Jewish condition – inculcated
into them by their high-priests, ancient prophets, and eventually rabbis, to take
the blame for their god’s failures onto themselves. To admit that perhaps their
religion had got “G” God wrong would, of course, be the end of the power,
prestige and status of that religion’s officers.
We all have to answer the question of the Old
Testament god’s existence and/or divinity for our selves. As I have said before,
I suspect the answer will reveal more about your self than about any “G” God. The
vast majority of the thinking Western world voted on the question of this god with
their feet – when they left the Judeo-Christian House of God.
But there is another, larger question: if the Old
Testament “g” god is just an ancient invention of one ancient people, does this
mean there can be no “G” God?” Many, with varying agendas, have made their mind
up on this question – but we will continue to look for “G” God, hopefully with
no agenda other than to seek the “T” Truth rather than our comforting “t” truth?
Our examination of the Biblical foundations of the House
of God now comes to the New Testament. Many say that the New Testament is a
vastly different kettle of fish to the Old – the ancient scriptures were just
metaphors and analogies – the Gospels, Letters, Acts and Revelations are surely
the word of God – the “T” Truth?
Let’s see.
*********************************
THE NEW TESTAMENT
Jesus was either illiterate, chose not to write, or
none of his writings survive. Because of this we have to rely on the memory and
honesty of others to know the “T” Truth of Jesus. “Memory” because the Gospels claiming
to tell of Jesus’ words and deeds were carried for many years in the verbal
tradition before being written down, and “honesty” because when they were finally
written down 40-90 years (between the youngest and oldest Gospels) after Jesus’
death it was a time when disputing factions were rife among the disciples of Jesus.
The many gospels available disagreed on many points – apparently in an effort to
push emerging doctrines which varied (often quite markedly). Which became “G”
Gospels from those available (i.e. which were declared to have “apostolic authority”)
was not finally agreed upon – and assembled together with other writings as the
“New Testament” – until 367 A.D. (firstly by bishop Athanasius of Alexandria).
The dominant members of Jesus’ followers became institutionalised as the “Christian”
House of God when it was declared the imperial religion of the Roman Empire by Emperor
Theodosius in 380 A.D. Official religions need agreed canon and creed, and to achieve
this it became an article of faith that this “New Testament”, written and
assembled by man, is actually the word of God – and it is held to be so by
orthodox members of the House of God to this day.
What had apostolic authority was within the say-so of
the early Church fathers – and others who might have a vested interest in the creation
of a House of God (like Emperor Constantine). There had been, and still was, much
dispute (like the Marcion, Arian and Gnostic controversies), and the Bible was
only settled after:
“doctrinal
disagreement” about “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
(in “The
The earliest copy of the complete New Testament we
now have was also translated through other languages (in the case of Jesus’
words from the original Aramaic). It was also a copy of a copy of a copy. It
was therefore subject to changes and mistakes inherent in the translation and hand
copying processes – and to religious editing by whichever faction the translator
or copyist belonged to. So, in total, the contents, hence the reliability of
the New Testament was affected by the length of time it was carried anecdotally
before being written down; by varying agenda of the various Gospellers; the
agenda of those doing the selection and compilation of the extensive written
materials available; and finally by various translations, transcriptions, and
religious editing that occurred over the centuries between what was first
written and the earliest complete copy of the New Testament we now have.
Because Jesus made only a blip on the radar of
secular history (just a few lines by the Roman historian Tacitus, and a few by
the Jewish historian Josephus) the New Testament forms the only significant source
material we have for the words and deeds of a man called Jesus – arguably the
most influential person in human history. Therefore, to get closer to this important
man, and any “T” Truths he might have had for us, we have only the New
Testament. These Truths must inevitably be buried among the “t” truths the
various authors, but to find them, we must read it in its entirety. Let’s see
if we can uncover any Truths?
Firstly the Gospels. I use the dating agreed to by the
majority of biblical scholars:
MATTHEW (circa 80 AD)
Although the Gospel of Matthew is the first Gospel to
appear in the New Testament it was not the first written. According to consensus
biblical scholarship, the Gospel of Matthew was written about 15 years after
the second Gospel appearing in the New Testament (Mark), and was largely (about
90%) copied from it.
Matthew begins with a table of Jesus’ descent from
Joseph – which happens to be different to the descent listed in the third
Gospel (Luke 3:23-38). So from the very beginning we have disagreement between
the Gospels – and we ask ourselves for the first time how this can happen if
both are “the word of God”? But a more bothersome 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 authorise Jesus to the Jews,
makes him out to be “the son of David,
son of Abraham” (1:1). Matthew goes to great lengths to trace Joseph all
the way to David and Abraham, but why do it if Joseph was not Jesus’ father? Mary
was supposedly a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus – “visited” by an angel – not
impregnated by Joseph:
“before
their marriage she found that she was with child by the Holy Spirit.”
(1:18)
Therefore Joseph’s ancestors were irrelevant. So
which is correct, the doctrine of virgin birth, or the Bible? If Mary is the
only human related to Jesus through the flesh, it is her ancestors that are
relevant here, and they should have been listed.
Page 1, and two problems for the New Testament being
the “word of God”, already. Not a good beginning in the search for Truth?
To understand why Matthew may have concocted Jesus’
ancestors in this way, we have to consider the fact that to have any chance of recruiting
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 champion of the Jews who was going to lead them in conquering their
enemies. To do this, Jesus had to be made out to comply with what was written
about the Messiah in the Scriptures – crucially he had to be descended from
David and Abraham. I guess Matthew 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
Later, in another attempt to fulfil Old Testament
Messianic prophecy, Matthew (following Mark this time) recounts the story of
Jesus 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” also comes
from Jewish Scripture (Zechariah, 9:9). According to Matthew, the crowds in
Although Matthew tried to sell Jesus to the Jews of
Jerusalem as the Old Testament Messiah, did Jesus see himself as such – a much
more difficult question? Matthew puts words in Jesus’ mouth (which the other
Gospellers missed) that imply that Jesus did see 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.’ ” (Matthew, 10:34).
These militant, unforgiving words that Matthew has
Jesus say are also taken from Jewish Scripture (Micah, 7:5-6). The forgiving, “peace
on earth” Jesus that most Christians like to think of as the real Jesus is here
depicted, rather, as the anticipated warrior king of the Old Testament. To have
any chance of proselytizing a Jewish audience, Jesus had to be authorised by the
Old Testament (which of course was not “Old” to them, but the current and only
true “S” Scripture).
In another place Matthew tries to influence his target
Jewish audience by depicting Jesus as a chip off the Old Parochial Block – telling
them, straight out, that Jesus was only interested in the Jews. Matthew has
Jesus say this to a Gentile woman who had asked Jesus for help:
“I was only sent to the lost sheep of the
house of
And Jesus supposedly goes on to describe non-Jews as
“dogs”:
“It
is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
(21:24-26)
Did Jesus really think he was only here for his
fellow Jews, and that Gentiles were the equivalent of “dogs”? Either Matthew is
making this up, or Jesus is not the man the Gentile Christian Church fathers
thought he was? Either way, the Bible is not good foundational material for the
Gentile Christian House of God.
Matthew also goes to some lengths to convince his
Jewish audience in his uniquely recorded “Sermon on the Mount” 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)
Biblical scholar Barrie Wilson (Professor, Humanities
and religious Studies,
“This
is a crucial passage for understanding Matthew’s Jesus [who] did not believe in the abolition of Torah.
This passage was aimed squarely at the heart of Paul’s teaching, which had
denied the validity of Jewish law”.
The Gospel of Matthew (like all the Gospels) was
written after Paul’s letters – despite being located in the New Testament
before them. We will see later how factions developed in Jesus’ followers after
his death – and which faction the Gospellers was from affected what he wrote in
his Gospel. For example, Matthew was a Gospeller of what
Matthew’s Jewish Jesus therefore has plenty of good Ol’
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 – a man who did not
shun prostitutes and who, in another Gospel, tells the bandit hanging on a
cross beside him at
Not only does Matthew have Jesus’ casting people into
hell for sneering and lusting but he has Jesus warning that whole towns will be
cast 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 – Matthew allows us a
glimpse of a new radical message – a message that goes against the usual Old Testament
current – and a voice that is not only radical but distinct, unique and daring.
A voice with a new understanding of what it could mean to be human – ideas that
challenge us to defy the old, vicious teachings of the 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)
Now these are new ideas! So, is the real Jesus an
unforgiving warrior – come with a sword to set families against themselves and damn
whole villages for not listening – or is the real Jesus a radical – preaching of
not only managing to forgive, but of striving to love our enemies?
Confusion. Before we arrived at the above new, different
voice of love and of turning the other cheek, Matthew had Jesus threaten us
with hell four times and mention the devil at least five – then threatens to cast
humanity into fire and brimstone for eternity (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 as Matthew, in his proselytizing zeal, tars Jesus with
the Old Testament brush of hell, hate and anger, and feathers him with the Old
Testament god of fear and guilt. Unfortunately the contrary words Matthew credited
to Jesus, confuse – but even worse – the revolutionary message of the primacy
of love and forgiveness is diluted, if not completely lost. For me, Jesus was a
revolutionary, and the revolutionary words are more likely to be his. Here, the
baby of Jesus (love and forgiveness) gets thrown out with the bathwater of religion
(fear – the main tool used by the officers of religion to keep the flock under their
power).
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 we see at 5:39-48
(and will see in Luke 6:29)? Was Jesus just another Old Testament-style prophet
or a new voice who risked his life by challenging his own violent religion in
order to bring us a new message. The man who was not afraid to give his life by
contradicting the old scriptures: “you
have heard it said… but I say unto
you…”? This confusion in the Bible of the new and old messages is what has
enabled Christianity to find authority for anything – slaughtering entire
cities (Crusades), burning people at the stake, Inquisitions, interdenominational
wars etc., etc.
So the New Testament, so far, with its
contradictions, confusions and hidden agendas asks questions, rather than
answers them. But they are questions that, ultimately, we have to answer for ourselves
because the officers of the House of God will only give answers out of their
vested interest. Our answers, I am coming to suspect, will not define Jesus, or
God – but our selves?
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 found in the other Gospels. 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 intrigue – 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? This is probably a shot at Paul and his Gentile-oriented
Christ Movement?
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)
The Gospels agree that Jesus said this – it is often
stated throughout the New Testament. But the predicted event of the coming of
God did not take place, and Jesus’ mistake is a perennial problem for the argument
that the Bible is the infallible word of an omniscient God. The fathers of the
House of God eventually formed in Jesus’ name have tried to flannel this
problem away with doctrine which said God’s kingdom was in fact ushered in when
Jesus died for us, and other such arguments (the millions who were subsequently
killed and tortured by religion would have surely doubted it). But, you can see why the Gospels stressed the
imminent coming of God – the eternal life for believers it was to usher in, was
a popular selling point – enabling the new Christian religion to eventually
dominate the Mediterranean world and beyond.
On another point, Matthew ascribes a strange and wilful
petulance to Jesus:
“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 that we are allowed to 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?
And then, shortly after that act of great petulance
and ignorance, we have great understanding, compassion and wisdom:
“Inasmuch
as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my bretheren, ye have done it
unto me. (25:40 – King James Version).
Here, Matthew, in this passage has God (through the
mouth of Jesus), not only extending compassion and understanding to the least
of society (including prisoners in jail), but also extending brotherhood.
THE JUDGEMENT OF JESUS
In the scenes of Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate,
Matthew has the crowd call for Jesus’ execution – although Pilate could find no
case against him. After washing his hands of the matter, Pilate hands Jesus
over to avoid trouble, and the crowd says:
“Then
the people as a whole answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’ “
(27:25)
Did this really happen? It is a very anti-Semitic
piece of writing – one that Jews have blamed for much of their persecution at
the hands of Christians over the years. Did Matthew even really write this? Matthew
is of the Jewish “Jesus Movement” faction, rather than Paul’s more
Gentile-oriented “Christ Movement” – he is not likely to condemn his own
people? Maybe this an addition – the subject of religious editing?
THE DEATH OF JESUS
In his Passion narrative, Matthew has a unique and
amazing story of premature bodily resurrection for some – a startling event not
recounted in the other 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
Matthew’s accounts of the important happenings at
So, how are we to know what actually happened – the
“T” Truth? The New Testament so far is contradictory, inconsistent – hardly
what you would expect of the inerrant word of God. More like the very human,
errant word of man, and we have to decide ourselves which parts are true – the
entirety cannot be the “T” Truth. Matthew’s task is revealed as one primarily
of the proselytisation of his fellow Jews but, even so, a hint of a different,
special man has started to emerge. A test for the reliability of the Gospels I
suggest we use is: which parts of the Jesus story would have been difficult for
the Gospellers to invent – difficult because they speak of a wisdom and a
grandness of spirit beyond that which they show as their own by the rest of
their work? Some words in Matthew speak of a man who was larger than Matthew
shows himself to be.
We will look for this man further in the other
Gospels.
MARK (Circa 70 A.D.)
Mark is, by the consensus of Bible scholars, the earliest
Gospel in the New Testament. It was written about 40 years after Jesus’
execution and 10 years or so before Matthew’s Gospel. Mark is the prime source of
the later so-called “synoptic” (telling the same story) Gospels (Matthew &
Luke). Matthew copied Mark 90% & Luke copied Mark 50%.
Mark’s story opens with quotations from Old Testament
figures Malachi (Mal 3:1) and Isaiah (Isaiah 40:3) implying that these Old
Testament prophets were foretelling Jesus – “the Son of God” – and/or
foretelling John the Baptist, who was to proclaim the coming of Jesus. But Mark
had it wrong – to quote Malachi’s passage about messengers:
“ See,
I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you
seek will suddenly come to his temple.”
And Isaiah’s prophecy:
“ In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord…
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
And all people shall see it together.”
Malachi’s god did not suddenly “come to his temple”,
he is still awaited – the temple even being torn down (twice) – and Isaiah’s
“glory of the Lord” is yet to be revealed for all people to see. Both Old
Testament prophets go on to try to engender a good dose of fear into their
restive flocks – and blame them for their present troubles and God’s
non-appearance so far – the same old religious trick of fear and longing.
This opening of Mark’s Gospel is the usual attempt
(familiar from reading Matthew) to locate Jesus within the Jewish Scriptures.
This is a vital task if Mark is to successfully proselytise his fellow Jews to
the Jesus Movement. Because he spends the majority of his words on it, it is
fair to say this appears to be Mark’s main motive in writing his Gospel. I
suspect, that by the end of this Gospel, we will be asking has the Truth about
Jesus become secondary to Mark’s primary task – much as we asked after reading
Matthew?
Mark next quickly tells the story of Jesus’ baptism –
the heavens tearing apart, the white dove descending, God declaring Jesus his
son with whom he was well-pleased. Then Mark tells of the forty days temptation
by Satan in the wilderness. But Mark tells no story about Jesus’ virgin birth –
in fact nothing at all of his birth – no Magi, kings of the Orient, angels,
shepherds, frankincense, born in Bethlehem etc. etc. Mark just says:
“ In
those days Jesus came from
Mark makes no attempt to show Jesus was descended
from Abraham through David. These seem to be stories added by the later
Gospellers who do (Matthew and Luke) as they attempted to push Messianic
doctrine? Mark does not push Trinitarian doctrine about Jesus, wasting no ink
trying to establish Jesus’ Divinity. Hence there are no stories about virgin
birth – of Jesus being conceived of an angel – rather he was born through
normal channels (so to speak) – like the rest of us ordinary mortals.
Trinitarian doctrine seems to have occurred later as Jesus’ followers moved on
from courting the Jews, to targeting the lager
Instead, Mark moves quickly into Jesus’ ministry in
But all three Gospellers do manage to agree on the
fact of Jesus’ mistaken belief about the imminent coming of God – within the
generation of his present audience. As Mark tells it:
“ ‘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, the Gospels can agree on Jesus’ mistakes!? The
question is begged, not for the first or last time – who made the mistake: Jesus,
the Gospeller, or God – who supposedly wrote/inspired the Gospel? Whatever the
answer, the Bible is left unreliable because that generation did not “live to
see it all” – we still await the “
Mark agrees with Matthew that Jesus felt he was only on
a mission to his own people, the children of God. According to the Bible Jesus even
likened non-Jews to dogs:
“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.’ ” (Mark 7:26-29)
So, according to the word of God, Jesus saw that his
mission on Earth was only for his fellow Jews – “the children” – the rest being
“their dogs”. Mark’s Jesus did eventually cure the Gentile woman’s daughter,
but only because she gave such a quick-witted answer. Jesus complied with the
woman’s request to cure her daughter, not straight away, but “for such a reply”
– not because he loved the daughter. If that woman had argued with Jesus about
his assessment of Gentiles as dogs, would Mark’s Jesus have still cured her
daughter? Whatever the answer to that one, it makes you wonder why evangelical,
Gentile Christians hang so tightly to the Bible as “God’s word” – after it says
Jesus regarded us as dogs (not to mention the story we shall read later in
Revelations about there only being twelve gates into paradise – one for each of
the twelve Jewish tribes)?
There are more extraordinary “words of God” in Revelations
which we will examine when we come to it.
Mark recounts many miracles performed by Jesus – he fed
multitudes of thousands with a few loaves and fishes on two occasions; raised
people from the dead; cast out demons from a human into pigs (which then
drowned); walked on water – and many more. Then his family heard he was potty,
as he went without honour in his own home-town of
Mark has Jesus engage in some Old Testament hell-casting
and teeth-gnashing – but thankfully not as much as Matthew. Mark also reiterates
the story of Jesus petulantly withering the fig tree for not producing fruit on
demand – but he makes the story an even greater indictment of Jesus for his apparent
petulance – he tells us:
“for
it was not the season for figs.” (11:14)
Would your “one true Son of God” curse a tree to
death for it being without fruit out of season? Either the Bible is wrong or
Jesus was less than Divine – either way doctrine is in trouble.
But Mark does occasionally allow us glimpses of a man
of great wisdom :
“Listen
to me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside of a person that by
going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile…whatever goes
into a person from outside cannot defile since it enters, not the heart but the
stomach…It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within,
from the human heart, that evil intentions come…” (7:14-15 & 18-21 –
when questioned by the priests about his non-observance of Jewish food laws.)
“Those
who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have not
come to call the righteous but sinners.” (2:17 – when questioned about why
he mixed with sinners.)
“The
Sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the Sabbath.” (2:27 – when questioned about his group
working on the Sabbath.)
“I
tell you then, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received
it and it will be yours. ” (11:24 – about how to achieve success from
prayer.)
“For
what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their soul?” (8:36)
“It
is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is
rich to enter the
“They
brought a coin to him and he said, ‘Whose head is this?’ They answered, ‘The
emperor’s’. Jesus said to them, ‘Give to the emperor the things that are the
emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s’ ” (12:16 – when asked if
the Jews should pay taxes to
And we are allowed to see something of a man of love:
“…love
your neighbour as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. ”
(12:30-32)
THE CRUCIFIXION
Mark and Matthew’s story of Jesus’ crucifixion and
resurrection is different to Luke, the other synoptic Gospel. Mark and Matthew
have Jesus cry out in his anger and his pain:
“My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” (Mark 15:34; Matt 27:46).
These final words of Jesus are taken from the Old
Testament (Psalm 22:1). The two earlier Gospels of Matthew and Mark are much
more concerned to use the Old Testament to authorise Jesus in the eyes of their
fellow Jews than Luke. Luke is writing later and, as we are about to see, his
motive seems to be to target a wider-Mediterranean, Gentile audience.
LUKE (Circa 90 -120 A.D.)
Luke begins his gospel, uniquely, with the story of
the birth of John the Baptist to Zechariah and Elizabeth. Luke then pushes
Messianic doctrine by tying Jesus to Bethlehem in order to fulfil an Old
Testament prophecy which states that the Messiah has to come from there (Micah
5:2). Luke and Matthew are the only two Gospellers who try to establish this, but
they tell different stories. In Luke’s version, Mary – pregnant with Jesus,
accompanies Joseph to
Matthew didn’t bother with the census story – just stated
Jesus was born there with no explanation as to why he wasn’t born in his
family’s home town of
While Luke and Matthew both push Messianic doctrine,
they have wildly different version of the “facts” of the matter. Luke has a
different genealogy of Joseph than Matthew. Luke traces Joseph’s descent from
King David through forty-one generations (whereas Matthew can only find
twenty-eight from David). Very few of the names overlap and then Luke manages
to trace Joseph all the way back to Adam! But the whole exercise is futile – because,
again, Jesus was not related to Joseph if he was not born of Joseph – but virgin-born.
Luke tells us an angel visited Mary and told her: “The Holy Spirit will come
upon you” (Luke,1:35) – so to speak. However you slice it, if you believe this,
it is the lineage of Mary that should have been examined, Joseph is irrelevant.
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 soon see, John has the story different
again – and the lesson different as well. The question which comes, time and
again when reading the contradictory Gospels is: if the “truth will set you
free”, what is the truth? Whose “t” truth – Mark’s, Matthews’, Luke’s, or John’s
– is any of it the Truth?
MANY DIFFERING AGENDA AND MOTIVES IN GOSPEL WRITING
We have seen so far, the differing truths Matthew,
Mark, and Luke (the synoptic Gospellers – supposedly telling the same story)
can only be explained by their differing agenda – differing because they
apparently came from whichever faction they belonged to, whichever doctrine
they espoused as the Jesus movement grew into a House. Luke tells us himself
that there were many Gospels written: “many have undertaken to set down an
orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us.” (Luke 1:1) Many
more than the four eventually chosen to go into the New Testament, and those
who were driven to write another Gospel, to change the story, were inspired
more by personal, or group, motives – than by God. Why was another, differing
Gospel necessary if God had already written the Truth?
No, all considered, the Gospels do not appear Divine,
bearing instead all the hallmarks of the work of men, writing at different
times during a dynamic, changing era (e.g. the war with Rome and the
destruction of the Temple). Men who were members of evolving factions and
influenced by the evolving controversies of the day. The Gospels observably trace
an evolutionary path as the followers of Jesus evolve – they do not resemble the
work, the final word, of a non-evolving, omniscient being – an absolute God.
However, there have been some broad agreements
between Gospellers. For example, Jesus’ teachings about loving your enemies; turning
the other cheek; treating others as you would like them to treat you:
“But
I say unto you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
bless those who curse you, pray for those who curse you, pray for those who
abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from
anyone who takes away your coat, do not withhold even your shirt…Do to others
as you would have them do to you.” (Luke
6:27-31)
Maybe, because the Gospellers do manage to agree, these
radical ideas (radical in a brutal, revengeful, “eye for an eye” world) are the
real teachings of Jesus – maybe this is the “T” Truth which will set us free?
But, while the bearer of evident Truths, Jesus seemed
to have some “t” truths of his own – because the synoptic Gospels also all
agree in their telling of Jesus’ belief in 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
It did not happen within the lifetime of “some of
those standing here”, and you could be sure that by the time the Gospel of Luke
was written (about 20 years after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem)
the non-occurrence of the coming of God would have been thrown back into the
faces of the Jesus movement many times. But Luke worked up an answer to counter
God’s non-appearance :
“ 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)
So the coming of God will not be visible even to
“careful observation”? It certainly would not have been very observable to the innocent
people being burned at the stake, tortured in Inquisitions, murdered in
Crusades and inter-denominational wars over the centuries which followed. All of
these things were done during the “
There is also broad agreement across the synoptic Gospels
about Jesus’ supposed intolerance, violent anger and ability to hate:- Korazin,
“ ‘Woe
to you Korazin! Woe to you
This, supposedly, from the same man who urged
forgiveness? Or have the Gospellers worked up Jesus’ violent anger to scare others
into following them? Nothing has changed in the Bible, fear is the main
conversion technique in the New Testament – just as it was in passages like
this from the Old:
“ 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.”
Isaiah (66:15-16)
Religion in all its forms is a classic exercise in
control, rather than a search for Truth. The main method of controlling the
masses is by dangling the carrot, and wielding the stick – the carrot (of
heaven) and the stick (fear of hell). In religions of the “Book”, the book is the
main tool of control. The Bible is a brilliant example – it is not about recording
the “T” Truth, but about enshrining religions “t” truths as the unchangeable “Word
of God”. But there are some Truths in there, and Luke occasionally manages to reveal
some to us by recording the preternatural wisdom of Jesus:
“Give and it will be given to you…” (Luke
6:38)
“For each tree is known by its fruit...” (6:44)
“One’s life does not consist in the abundance
of possessions…(12:15)
“Give unto Caesar…” (20:24)
Luke tells many unique tales and parables of Jesus – like
the Prodigal Son, and the Good Samaritan. Luke is writing later, when the Jesus
Movement (Jesus’ brother, James, was one of its leaders) had been largely
rejected by the Jewish population, to be gradually outpaced by the Christ
Movement (which followed Paul’s doctrines). The Christ Movement was pursuing,
profitably, a wider Mediterranean audience – and Luke was its Gospeller. The
starring role in Luke’s Good Samaritan parable is given to a Gentile. It is a
story to counter the earlier Jesus Movement Gospellers’ stories that assure us
Jesus had only come for the Jewish people. Luke casts his net on the other side
of the boat – fish are fish, after all – religion’s power comes from the hearts
and minds of men, any men.
Luke’s unique parable of the Great Dinner is more
evidence that the Christ Movement, following Paul’s teachings, has turned its
back on a Jewish target audience. The net is cast wider, and the exclusively
Jewish Jesus of the earlier Gospels recedes into the past:
“ ‘Someone gave a great dinner and invited
many. At the time for the dinner he sent for his slave to say to those who had
been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’ But they all alike began to
make excuses…Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave,
‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor,
the crippled, the blind, and the lame…so that my house may be filled. For I
tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner’.” (14:16-24)
Luke, also uniquely, has Jesus appointing another
seventy-two disciples (10:1) – a fact unknown to Matthew and Mark. There was
much dispute among the followers of Jesus (we can see it evidenced in Paul’s
letters) as to who in the movement had apostolic authority. Maybe Luke increased
the number of disciples so that wider claims to authority could be made for
doctrine generating purposes? The Bible leaves us with so many maybes.
Luke tells us stories about Jesus’ ability to change
the natural laws of the universe – some reported in the other Gospels, and some
unique to Luke. Like other Gospels, Luke’s Jesus turns five loaves and two
fishes into a massive amount of food (enough to feed 5000, with twelve baskets
left over); and cures lepers, the paralytic, the withered, and the demonic. Luke’s
Jesus doesn’t walk on water, as in the other Gospels, but he calms a storm. In
one of his miracles, Luke’s Jesus transfers demons from a man into a herd of
swine – who then rush off and drown themselves in the sea (8:32).
This presents us with a conundrum because Luke also
tells us that God treasures all of his creatures – even the smallest :
“ ‘Are
not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in
God’s sight.’ ” (Luke 12:6)
So why would God, who cares for even the smallest of
his creatures, drown a herd of swine for no other purpose than to execute a
flamboyant gesture? Another credibility problem for the “word of God“.
JESUS’ TRIAL AND CRUCIFIXION
Luke’s account of Jesus’ trial before Pilate differs
from all the other Gospellers – Luke has Jesus examined before both Pilate and
Herod. In Luke’s version of “God’s Truth” Pilate cannot find any fault with
Jesus so he sends him on to Herod to be judged. Herod couldn’t find any fault
either and sends him back to Pilate. Luke’s account of the crucifixion is also different:
Jesus tells one of the criminals executed with him that he would be with him
that day 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 ask forgiveness for those who were torturing him
to death is amazing – an ultimately Divine example for the rest of us to
follow. But this is probably an example of my “t” truth, rather than the “T” Truth,
because Luke seems to have invented these words in his striving to make Jesus
out to be more Divine than human. Why? – to support emerging Trinitarian
doctrine about Jesus being “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost”. Jesus’ forgiving the
soldiers here can also be read as not an ultimate act of forgiveness your
enemies, but because “they do not know what they are doing” – i.e. killing God.
Luke also records Jesus’ final words differently from
the very human, despairing words recorded in the earlier Gospels – “My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?”. Luke, instead, has Jesus saying:
“ ‘
Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.’
” (23:46)
A much more Divine and much less angry, human end. But,
again, it looks for all the world like embellishment for the purpose of the
Divining of Jesus. Luke was one of the later Gospels, written about 90 AD, when
the original small Jesus movement was evolving into a House. The House fathers
felt that it had a mission to expand further, but by the time of Luke, a lot of
questions and criticisms about Jesus had arisen (how were they able to kill
God?) and doctrine was developed to cope. We will examine the process of
doctrine (e.g. Messianic, Trinitarian, Salvationist) development in more detail
when we examine the other late Gospel, John.
THE RESURRECTION
Luke’s version of the “D” Divinely written, or
inspired, words describing the resurrection of Jesus is different to the supposedly
equally Divine words found in other Gospels. Luke has two angels at the empty
tomb instead of one. Luke has Joanna instead of Mark’s Salome at the tomb with
the two Marys. Luke also had several other nameless women from
But there is a more striking point of difference in
Luke’s resurrection story – it concerns his unique tale of a journey to Emmaus
by two of Jesus’ followers. By the time Luke was written, the claim that Jesus
was the Messiah was looking very shaky. Jesus had been executed, and he had not
liberated the Jews – as was expected of the Messiah according to the Jewish
Scriptures. Quite the reverse – the Jewish position had worsened, they had suffered
another defeat by
As we have seen, disagreement between the synoptic Gospels
is common – making them seem, not so much the infallible word of an omniscient
God, but the opinions of men with different ideas – the inchoate doctrines of
evolving factions. Matthew rewrote and/or embellished Mark by about 10%, and Luke
by about 50%. The authors obviously had varying agendas – and recording the
exact Truth was not being high on them. They obscure the real Jesus from us
and, again, we have to make up our own minds. Again the process of mining the Bible
for Truth will reveal more about our selves, than about God or Jesus –
according to which “facts” we hold to be true.
No wonder faith in its “t” truths is more important
to the House of God, than finding the “T” Truth. But we are on an expedition
for Truth in these essays and we are not interested in sheltering within the “H”
Houses the Gospellers are trying to build. We are bound to ask, was Jesus the
Messiah – did he even think he was? The Jewish people voted with their feet,
and still await their Messiah. To them, Jesus is just another Messiah claimant
– of which there have been many over the years who have not been able to
deliver.
We also have to ask on our expedition, if Jesus was
not the Messiah, the Trinity, virgin born – is his importance lessened – did he
bring “T” Truths? We will look more closely for our answers to these important
questions later.
We have finished the synoptic Gospels and now we
examine the Gospel of John.
JOHN (Circa 90’s A.D.)
In John’s version of God’s word, Jesus’ ministry lasts
one year – from one Passover festival to the next. John never has Jesus tell a
parable or cast out demons, but his Jesus does still have power over the natural
laws of the universe – performing miracles like changing water into wine;
feeding 5000 with 5 loaves and 2 fishes; walking on water; raising people from
the dead (Lazarus after 4 days). Rather than the litany of cures we see in some
of the earlier Gospels, John’s is more like one long sermon in which John
proselytises heavily for the Jesus movement – which at the time of John’s
writing was morphing into the Christian “H” House of God. John’s Gospel is a
mighty effort of proselytising for this inchoate House, creating authority for its
firming doctrines of the Trinity and Salvation.
TRINITY
In his 12 month ministry, John’s Jesus repeatedly pushes
the idea of his Divinity and the Trinity – stating clearly that he is God’s
only Son (3:16); that he and God are one (10:30); and that he will return as a special
“Advocate” (14:16) after his death – the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost of the
Trinity.
SALVATION
Instead of getting the world ready for the imminent
coming of God, as in the earlier Gospels, John’s Jesus clearly sees his mission
as Salvation:
“ ‘I
come not to judge the world, but to save the world…’ “ (12:47).
And, the only way to Salvation is through himself:
”For
God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that everyone who believes in
him may not perish but have eternal life.” (3:16)
The Jesus Movement – as it was in earlier Gospels – has
morphed into (or been out proselytised by) a Christ Movement. Jesus is now
enshrined as the Christ – the “chosen one” – the “S” Son, God incarnate. The
centrepiece of an “H” House – the Christian House of God. John “Christifies”
Jesus by having him deliver long discourses about who his is – the “I ams”:
“ ‘I am the bread of life… (6:48)
‘I am the light… (8:12)
‘I am not of this
world… (8:21)
‘I am the good shepherd… (10:11)
‘I am the
resurrection and the life…
(11:25)
‘I am the way… (14:6)
In the words of Professor Barrie Wilson:
“they
too [i.e. the Gospels, as well as Paul’s letters] show evidence of Christification, especially the Gospel of John with
its emphasis on the “I am” statements not found in any other characterisation
of Jesus.”
“How Jesus Became Christian”,
The Christification, or “D” Divination of Jesus was
necessary, as we shall see in a moment.
John, like Luke, has some unique stories of Jesus. For
example, the story of water into wine at a wedding; raising Lazarus; the man
born blind. John, also uniquely, has Jesus at peace with his family: attending the
Cana wedding with his mother; 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).
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 seems less hopeful about populating this new
House with Jews, and appears more interested in the wider, non-Jewish
population. Although he does have Jesus state that he is the Jewish Messiah,
John makes no attempt to trace Jesus back to David through Joseph, like the
other Gospels, nor locate Jesus’ birth to
“ ‘
And:
“How
can the Christ come from
And:
“Look into it, and you will find that a prophet
does not come out of
John also has a different version of the anointing of
Jesus’ feet with perfume. John has it take place after his other unique story
of raising Lazarus from the dead – and he had it performed by Mary – one of Lazarus’
sisters, not by the sinful woman (prostitute) depicted in the other Gospels. The
lesson from this anointing is different to Luke, but similar to Mark and
Matthew – i.e. that it was in preparation to Jesus’ death and burial, and that
we will always have the poor with us (some disciples considered the money for
the perfume should have been given to the poor) but we will not always have
Jesus.
John (like Luke) concentrates on making Jesus out to
be more Divine, than human, changing some of the very human words given to
Jesus in Matthew and Mark’s Gospels. For example, at Gethsemane John has Jesus say
(after Peter has struck one of the party come to arrest Jesus):
“ ‘Put
your sword back in its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has
given me?’” (John 18:11).
The earlier Gospels portray a more human Jesus,
agonising over his fate:
“’My father, if it is possible, let this cup
pass from me.’ “ (Matt., 26:39)
“he
threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour
might pass from him.” (Mark 14:35).
John also changes Jesus’ final words on the cross. Unlike
the human, angry accusation (“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”)
recorded in Matthew and Mark, Luke has much more Divine final words for Jesus:
“ ‘It
is finished’. Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” (John, 19:30)
Embellishment? The “D” Divining of Jesus does seem to
be a later idea – Luke, the other late Gospel also gives Jesus a human/Divine
end. The idea of human/Divine figures is a common one in the Mediterranean
world (Emperor Augustus, for example) and if Christianity was to compete in
this wider arena a doctrine of Divinity, like the Trinity, would be necessary.
As well as different versions of
So someone has the words of God – wrong. Why? You can
only surmise. John, like Luke, appears to be trying to counter the idea (doubtless
being peddled by the enemies of the Christian movement at the time) that the
execution of Jesus should be represented as a defeat – proof that Jesus was not
God’s only begotten Son, the Messiah, or, indeed – God Himself. John, perhaps, is
again trying to authorise the building doctrine of Jesus’ Divinity. Indeed, the
authorisation of doctrines (especially Trinitarian and Salvationist) was
probably John’s motive for writing yet another Gospel – wasn’t three enough?
The followers of Jesus were forming up into an “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 significantly different tomb and
resurrection stories as well.
Especially unique is John’s doubting Thomas story. This
was a lesson from the pulpit in the importance of putting faith before knowledge
– very important for any House which expects its inhabitants to believe weird
things:
“ ‘Have
you believed because you have seen me! Blessed are those who have not seen and
yet have come to believe.’ “ (John, 20:29)
The story of Jesus instructing the disciples where to
set their nets for a bumper haul is different in John – occurring after Jesus’ death
and resurrection (21:4-7), whereas in Luke it is very early in Jesus’
relationship with his disciples (Luke 5:6-7). John, uniquely, then has Jesus
cook breakfast for his disciples.
These, again, are not differences of opinion or
interpretation but differences of fact – some minor, but some potentially 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 Messiah, the warrior king, come with a sword of the earlier Matthew:
“ ‘you
must not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to
bring peace, but a sword.’ ” (Matthew 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 very much
like one big religious sermon – John seems very much like a theologian – an
early Christian Churchman? He rants and rails, preaches and proselytises –
relentlessly.
But he does allow us a glimpse of Jesus’ trademark
love:
“ ‘I
give you a new commandment, that you love one another.’ “(13:34)
And wisdom:
“ ‘Let
anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’
“ (8:7)
“ ‘and
you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free’ ” (8:32)
“Have I not said ye are Gods?” (John
10:34)
And anger”
“ ‘Whoever
does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches
are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.’“ (15:6)
John, also uniquely (and intriguingly), introduces a
mysterious “favourite” of Jesus (13:23; 21:20-23). Jesus, even as he is hanging
on the cross, urges his mother to take up with this favourite as mother and son!?:
“ When
Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he
said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son. Then he said to the disciple,
‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.”
(John 19:26)
The favourite is not only unique, but an extraordinary,
story – leaving Jesus with an almost homosexual flavour because of the easy
physical familiarity he has with his “favourite”:
“ One
of the disciples – the one whom Jesus loved – was reclining next to him; Simon
Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So while
reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, ‘Lord, who is it?’ ” (John 13:23)
Jesus has a special, loving relationship with this
man:
“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?’ ” (21:22-23).
So what’s going on? Sounds to me like complete
embellishment on the part of John because, directly after the above – at the
very end of his Gospel – he implies Jesus’ favourite is himself:
“ ‘If
I want him to remain alive until I return, what is it to you?
This
is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them…” (John 21:23-24)
Also, here, again, we have 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 moping around the
In John we see more discrepancies of facts between
the Gospels – the inerrant word of God.
But, even through all the obvious embellishments, the
agenda of competing factions, Jesus still manages to shine a glimmer of some
“T” Truths which peep from beneath the Bible’s bushel of “t” truths. We will
look further.
THE GOSPELS AS A WHOLE
Our task in examining the Gospels is trying to extract
the “T” Truth about Jesus from all the apparent agenda that went into writing
the Gospels – the Jesus of fact from the Jesus of faith. The Gospels appear first
in the New Testament but they were written (Circa 70 – 120A.D.) well after
Paul’s letters (Circa 50’s A.D.) – even well after Paul had died (Circa early
to mid 60’s A.D.). The significance of this fact is that Paul was the chief
doctrinaire among Jesus’ followers. Paul was zealous and competitive, and he
created factions. The main factions were Paul and his followers (turning more
and more towards the Gentile population for recruits), and the
“We
should not imagine that gospels represent independent sources. They are the
creations of independent communities. Just as the Christ Movement [Paul’s] created their own, the Jesus Movement [led
by James, Jesus brother], and Gnostics fashioned
theirs… later Christians supplement Paul’s letters with various gospels that
were being written by the Christifying segment of the early church. These
include gospels like Luke and John…The Jesus Movement people and Ebionites [the
sect that this Movement evolved into] used
a version of the Gospel of Matthew. But they shunned the virgin birth story and
rejected Paul’s letters and such Christified gospels as Luke and John.
Similarly the Gnostics preferred their own material including the Gospel of
Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of the Saviour, the Apocryphon of John.”
“How
Jesus Became Christian”,
This is born out by our above examination of the
individual Gospels – there is much contradiction between the Gospels about
facts, and about Jesus’ words and deeds. These differences in the “word of God”
led to much subsequent disagreement among Jesus’ followers – evidenced by various
doctrinal disputes (like the Arian and Marcion controversies) and, eventually,
the various denominations which arose within the Christian House of God – who often
warred mightily and bloodily.
So the real Jesus – the Jesus of history – became embellished,
obscured – a victim of factional in-fighting. We will search for what can be
found of the real Jesus at the end of our examination of the New Testament.
Here suffice it to say Paul never read the Gospels, he was dead before they
were written. His followers and opponents wrote them – largely to authorise or
oppose his doctrines (that we will see expressed in his letters).
The “Christian” House of God as it now stands, does
not seem to be based on the rock of the real, historical Jesus, but upon
foundations of its own creation:
“The
gospel writings did not create the church. Rather these influential documents
are the church’s creation – and not the church as a whole, but only one faction
within the early Christian clustering of communities. The present New Testament
reflects the writings preferred by the Proto-Orthodox, the heirs of Paul’s
Christ Movement”
THE CHANGING GOSPELS
The first two Gospels (Mark, then Matthew) were
written by Jesus’ followers as aids in proselytising their fellow Jews –
constantly trying to “authorise” Jesus by referring to the Jewish Scriptures. The
next two Gospels (Luke and John) were the creation of the largely Gentile, Christ
Movement following Paul. These latter Gospels, together with the Books of the
New Testament we are about to examine (Acts and Paul’s Letters) form the basic
texts of the eventually ascendant Christ Movement of Paul – which evolved into the
Proto-Orthodoxy of the early Christian Church Fathers, an “H” House – the institutionalised
religion of the Roman Empire. Other factions like the Gnostics fell by the
wayside – their main Gospel (the Gospel of Thomas) only being rediscovered
recently in the 20th century.
In the New Testament we now come to the story of what
happened after the death of Jesus. We come to Acts – the mission of firstly,
Peter, then increasingly, Paul. The story of the slow but sure construction of
the Christian House of God – of how Jesus, a rebel against the establishment, became
the establishment.
*********************************
THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES (Circa 90-120 AD)
Acts is the story of Jesus’ followers as they
struggle on, after his death, to continue his teachings in the teeth of (often
violent) opposition from the orthodox Jewish House of God and the multivarious religions
of the wider Mediterranean world. It is the story especially of Paul, who broke
away from the Jewish-oriented Jesus sect to create a Gentile-oriented Christ
sect targeting a wider audience – a sect that eventually evolved into the Judeo/Christian
House of God.
WHO WROTE ACTS?
This book of the Bible is thought by most scholars to
have been written by the same author as the Gospel of Luke. Both open by being
addressed to a character called Theophilus, but within Acts there is a
transition from referring to Paul’s entourage as “they” to “we” the two times
that a character called Timothy enters the story (16:1-6 & 20:5). Acts also
disagrees with Luke on a couple of issues, for example, about the length of
time Jesus spends with the disciples after his resurrection – 40 days (Acts, 1:3)
cf. Luke’s 1-2 days. Luke also has the disciples leaving
The Word of God in Acts also disagrees with the Word
of God in the Gospels about the fate of Judas. In Acts, Judas falls and his
guts spill out on the “plot of land [bought]
with the price of his villainy.” (1:18),
in the Gospels Judas hangs himself. Divine, or Divinely inspired, the Bible yet
again disagrees with itself.
PRACTISED WHAT THEY PREACHED
Jesus remaining eleven disciples replace Judas with
Matthias and continue on with converting their fellow Jews. Peter took a
leading role and did many miracles. In Acts, the early Christians practiced as
well as preached Jesus’ teachings – they were humanity’s first (and probably
our only genuine) communists – sharing everything:
“All
who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their
possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
(Acts 2:44 – and 4:32-35)
DANGEROUS WORK
The early followers of Jesus tried gamely to
proselytise their fellow Jews, but it was dangerous work in the face of the vested
interest of the Sadducee chief priests, who saw their power challenged by the
followers of Jesus – just as Jesus himself had challenged them. And just as Jesus
had lost his life by challenging Sadducee vested interest, so did his apostles
– Stephen, was stoned to death (7:59) and James gets his head chopped off
(12:2). And Jesus’ apostles are regularly imprisoned and flogged.
But, according to Acts, resisting Christian
conversion could be dangerous too, as Herod demonstrated when he got struck
down by an angel of the Lord and “he was
eaten up with worms and died.” (12:23), and Ananias and his wife drop dead
just for not giving the Church all their money (5:1-6 & 7-10) – that should
have increased the takings from the next Sunday’s collection plate? The Bible
remains the usual tangle of fact and fantasy.
SAUL/PAUL
Acts tells us that a man named Saul was a member of
the party who stoned Stephen to death. This Saul was an enthusiastic persecutor
of Jesus’ followers, but after stoning Stephen, en route to
“ …the
Lord said…he [Saul] is an instrument
whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and Kings and before the
people of
Saul became commissioned in the Holy Spirit at
BRANCHED OUT TO GENTILES
But Peter still has an important role, and a vital
change in direction happens for the Jesus movement when Peter has a vision of a
sail-cloth filled with various different animals lowered from heaven (10:15-16).
He took this to mean that all people were acceptable to God, and that Jews
could now mix with unclean and uncircumcised types in order to convert them (10:28).
According to the Gospels Jesus saw his mission as only to the Jews, but now :-
“This
means that God has granted life-giving repentance to the Gentiles also. ”
(Acts, 11:18).
This vision was, literally, a God-send for the Jesus
sect – enabling it to transform from being a minor sect of Judaism into the world
religion it eventually became. The Gentiles were a much softer audience than
orthodox Jews overseen by the Sadducees – and there was more of them – a whole
world full!
MIRACLES
Peter and Paul have control over the natural world, and
do several miracles. Peter heals many people of diseases and brings Tabitha
back to life (9:40); Paul heals diseases and expels bad spirits merely by touching
a handkerchief or apron (19:11). Talking in tongues was all the go amongst the
early Christians (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.
Paul voyages around Asia Minor and
Paul continues to preach to the Jews in the network
of Jewish synagogues throughout the eastern Mediterranean area, often stirring
up trouble and ending in jail. Stories of miracles and escaping from jails with
Divine help abound. But Paul, when not well received, turns readily to the
Gentiles for converts:
“ Since
you reject it and judge yourselves to be unworthy of eternal life, we are now
turning to the Gentiles.” (13:46)
“Therefore
I want you to know that God’s salvation has been sent to the Gentiles, and they
will listen.” ( Acts 28:28).
But Paul still attempts to convert Jews at every
opportunity, and this was eventually his undoing. He is arrested in
SENT TO
Paul is able to avoid local judgement, and immediate
execution, because he is a Roman citizen. Paul is sent as a prisoner in chains via
a hazardous boat trip to
“ ‘…with
regard to this sect we know that everywhere it is spoken against.’ ” (Acts
28:22)
Paul’s story ends in
IS ACTS TRUE?
How much “T” Truth is there in the Book of Acts? Professor
Wilson is dubious:
“…the
Book of Acts is invented history. We know that the Book of Acts represents an
unreliable source for information about Paul. Acts contradicts what we know of
Paul from his own writings.” (Ibid. P. 145)
Something definitely unnatural happened to Saul/Paul
– a man just does not turn around so completely to go from prosecutor to
promoter in the course of a day – from the safety and prestige of an officer of
a well-entrenched religion to the uncertain and dangerous life as the main man
of a competing religion. Paul was beaten and imprisoned many times for his new
belief – eventually losing his life because of it. He was earnest in his belief,
but Paul was also undoubtedly a self-promoter – as we will plainly see in his
letters. Because of the unreliability of the Bible as history, whether Paul was
truly on God’s mission and/or had revelations or not, has to be a personal
decision. For me, his zealous, doctrinal, “H” House building is the start of the
process of clouding the Jesus of history – Jesus’ real “T” Truths of the
primacy of love, forgiveness, and doing unto others – with the doctrinal “t”
truths of religion. House building and the tussle for power that goes with it,
was a process that would lead ultimately to murderous inter-doctrinal wars – a process
that led ultimately to the majority of the human population throwing out the
baby of Jesus “T” Truths with the bathwater that is religion’s “t” truths.
ACTS REVEALS THE NEED FOR THE GOSPELS
In Acts what we do see clearly are that differences
arose between Paul’s Gentile-allowing faction, and the Jewish-oriented faction led
by James (brother of Jesus) in
“You
see brother, how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, and they
are all zealous for the law [Torah]. They
have been told about you that you teach all the Jews living among the Gentiles
to forsake Moses, and that you tell them not to circumcise their children or
observe the customs.” (Acts, 21:20-21).
We will read more of these differences in Paul’s
letters. Eventually these differences would grow, splitting Jesus’ followers
into two main factions – one (the Christ movement of Paul) eventually dominated,
and grew into a world religion. The other (the Jewish Jesus movement of James) to
evolved into the Ebionites, then died out. The warring factions needed
something to authorise their differing points of view, something in writing –
the Gospels.
Truth is always the first casualty of war, and we have
seen the evidence of embellishment in Jesus’ words and deeds as recorded in the
Gospels that came to be written. The two earlier Gospels (Mark and Matthew) concentrate
on making Jesus appear to be the fulfilment of the Jewish Scriptures in order
to proselytise the Jewish population, and the later Gospels (Luke and John)
changed the tune a bit so the Gentiles were not excluded – it was not uncommon
for the earlier Gospels to have Jesus state that he had only come for his
fellow Jews – the chosen people of God.
We often forget that the Gospels were written after
Paul – and it seems that the motivation for writing the Gospels was mainly to enter
the factional disputes that we see arising in Acts – rather than to record the
“T” Truth of Jesus’ words and deeds for posterity.
Time to examine the letters of Paul.
******************************
LETTERS (Circa 50-64 AD)
PAUL TO THE ROMANS:
Paul starts his letter by trying to establish Jesus
as of the blood of David – essential if Jesus is to be accepted as the Messiah by
the Jews: “on the human level he was born
of David’s stock” (1:3). Paul was writing well before the Gospels – it was
only when the Gospels came to be written, later, that we see the beginnings of
the virgin-birth doctrine – which doctrine conflicted with tracing Jesus’
descent through David, who wasn’t his father (but God). Later, when the wider
Mediterranean world was the target audience, the divination of Jesus was more
important (virgin-birth and Trinity doctrines).
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, are revealed as more truly good. What therefore can we
know of souls who have been “good” in life out of fear for the awful god of the
Scriptures? Are the religious only “good” because they fear divine punishment –
does religion therefore foul its own meaning of life – that life is a test, for
judgement?
“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 exposed for judgement – not the false heart –
only “good” through fear of God? 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 good religious person may only be revealing that
they are scared of a god, whereas a good atheist is revealed to be truly good.
Paul then tries to develop convoluted Salvationist doctrine
– Jesus’ execution was not a defeat, but the saving of us. The early Christians
were faced with the fact that Jesus was executed – looking very much like a
defeat, proof that Jesus was not anyone special. You could be sure that it
would have been pointed out to them many times by their potential converts –
“where is your man now, why did God not save him?”
“…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)
Paul tries to paint Jesus’ brutal execution as
somehow part of God’s plan and, indeed, proof of God’s “love towards us” –
whereas earlier in his letter he says we can be saved “on the day when God
judges the secrets of human hearts” by the goodness of our hearts. Why did
Jesus have to die to save good people if that is the case? Jesus’ death did not
“save” us – more likely his death just adds to the litany of the sins of
religion.
Rather than part of God’s holy plan, it is clear from
reading the Gospels that Jesus was killed by religion because he challenged the
power of the Sadducee priests over the people. He was becoming more popular
than them, he overruled their convoluted laws with a simple message of love and
forgiveness, he denied their power to control God through animal sacrifices and
worship. He was a threat to the entrenched power and prestige of the high
priests. The Roman governor, Pilate, wanted to let Jesus off but the priests
insisted on his execution. Religion killed Jesus and Paul’s: “we have now been justified by Christ’s
sacrificial death” is just more religion – a religion that went on to kill
millions more.
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 “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 House
of God 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 control 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.”
Spong, “Why Christianity Must Change or
Die”, P.234
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)
The New Testament can’t be removed from the Old
Testament, as some people within the House of God try – it is based on it. Paul
relies on the bare assertion of some ancient, inveigling praise-singer (Psalms
14:1) that we are all “debased” and none of us “show kindness”.
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
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)
The old carrot and stick formulae was used cunningly
to build the House of God. But 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 Paul doesn’t quite get Jesus’ idea of love. Paul
prefers an Old Testament flavour (Proverbs
25:21):
“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 – “heap
live coals on his head!? Compare this
with Christ’s idea of actually loving
your enemy! Jesus was beyond Paul’s ability to grasp. Jesus was a cut above the
ordinary that Paul shows himself to plainly be.
But, to be fair to Paul, he seems to 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 – “the whole law is summed up in love” –
he finally gets Jesus’ message. Is this message too simple to build a House on?
Paul and the other House of God fathers thought so – carrot and stick, carrot
and stick – can’t have a “H” House just built on the “carrot” of love and
forgiveness, can we? The “stick” is essential in the eyes of the fathers of all
Houses of God, past and present. In the case of the Christian House of God the
stick is provided by the brutal, awful, fearsome god of the Old Testament, and
the ravings of Revelations in the New Testament – as we shall see when we come
to examine that Book soon.
But what a House it could have been if it had been
founded just on Jesus’ “Love, Forgive, Do unto others”!? A House founded on the
need of our spiritual selves for love, rather than on the survival fears of our
animal body.
FIRST LETTER OF PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS
It didn’t take long for the followers of Jesus 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 were appearing in the House of God that Paul
was building. They remained a feature, becoming in time theological
denominations – and were 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 floggings and stonings he carried out, or
abetted, on the followers of Jesus when his name was Saul?
Paul was also sexist.
“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)
Now that’s just got to be the “word of God”, hasn’t
it? 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”? Paul, a pillar of the House of God, is
zealous, and full of errant nonsense – Jesus himself had close female
associates. And it was only the women who remained with him when he 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 too 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 God, or inspired by “Him”? 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’ message about the primacy of 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).
The Bible remains the usual tangle of spiritual “T”
Truths and theological doctrinal “t” truths. 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 here
illustrates clearly the difference between the “baby” of Jesus’ spiritual message
of love and forgiveness, and the bathwater of the religious animal 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 “Christian” faith
– then as now. Is Paul right, is Jesus’ message about the Truth of the primacy
of love completely dependent on the truth of the biblical story about the physical
survival of his body – and “null and void” if Jesus’ physical body was not
raised? Paul’s words need no interpretation: “our gospel is null and void” …
“your faith has nothing in it”.
The motives of Pauline Christianity are clearly Darwinian – about bodily
survival – venal, not spiritual.
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 woolly-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 did endure 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 that Paul was persecuted for his beliefs. The Bible can’t be
used as proof of itself – the Books don’t form independent sources – they are
all driven by the same motive to indoctrinate rather than record accurately,
but Acts and Paul’s letters do have a certain ring of authenticity about them
when describing Paul’s travels and travails. His zeal and fervour to convert may
have led to dud doctrine to build a House of Truth on, but it does seem he was
brave.
But he was also exceeding vain and self-promoting:
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. 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.”
He 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 amongst Jesus’ followers? This we will
never know, but we can know that he was vain, jealous, boastful, and sarcastic by
his letters (if he wrote them?) Considering this and the crimes perpetrated by
him when he was Saul, was he someone who should be allowed to dictate the
doctrines of any sound House of God? I ask this because the “Christian” House
of God seems to have been built on Paul rather than on Jesus?
Again, 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 salvation
from 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 (and dangerous) nut to
crack. 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 motives
for writing the Gospels must obviously to have been for the various developing
factions to win these developing disputes through the authority of the, supposedly,
very words of Jesus. This explains why so many Gospels were written (there were
many more than four) – and why they are contradictory.
Paul reveals himself as still a man of the ancient
tribal scriptures – 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 evils of slavery had biblical sanction.
The question continually recurs to one as we read the
Bible: the Judeo/Christian House of God is undoubtedly built on the Bible, but
what sort of God could dwell within? Again we have to ask our selves whether
our God is living in this House of God. I am suspecting that the Bible reveals
little of any true “D” Divine to us – but it does reveal plenty about our
selves – in the biblical God we believe in. Is life a test for punishment or
reward, as the House of God would have us believe, or is it an opportunity to
know our selves – and to grow our selves? We will examine this further in
another essay.
Here, this letter reveals that there is plenty of
tension in the evolving Christian House of God. There seems to be two “M”
Movements developing – a Jesus Movement working within the Jewish religion and
its Torah laws (like food laws and circumcision), and Paul’s Christ Movement – which
was targeting the Jews, but also welcoming a Gentile congregation – while he
was at the same time “Christifying” Jesus:
“You
who want to be justified by the law [Torah law] have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace…For
in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything.”
(5:4&6).
Paul certainly gets Jesus’ message of the primacy of
love:
“
the only thing that counts is faith working through love” and “For the whole law can be summed up in a
single commandment: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ ” (5:6&14-15).
But Paul’s vicious zealotry (which saw him enter our
story persecuting Jesus’ followers) breaks out again:
“I
wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!” (5:12).
And something more sinister starts to emerge:
“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? “Persecution
for the cross of Christ.”? And at 5:11 Paul speaks of “the offence of the cross”. Are we starting to see the beginnings of
Christian anti-Semitism which ended
up in the Holocaust?
Jesus was a Jew, he was popular among his fellow Jews
– too popular – he was killed by religion, specifically its Sadducee officers,
because he threatened their power and prestige. Jesus was not killed by the
Jews, nor the Romans – but by religion – the House of God. We are starting to
clearly see that religion is largely an attempt by men to take the power and
prestige of God unto themselves, rather than being a quest for Truth (as we
have seen in his letters, Paul was concerned about his prestige). We see
clearly now, that the House of God is an attempt to fortify religious “t”
truths, rather than to enshrine the “T” Truth.
Paul foresaw the problem of infighting between the
emerging factions:
“But
if you go on fighting one another, tooth and nail, all you can expect is mutual
destruction.” (5:15)
But “fighting one another” was to be a feature of the
“H” House that was building in the name of Jesus. And the fighting was to be
over convoluted, incredible, inconsequential doctrine – “t” truths, not the “T”
Truth. The future of the House of God was destined to be bloody because there
were plenty more zealots like Paul to come – people who were even prepared to
hang, burn and torture people to protect Pauline doctrine. It’s impossible to
know whether Paul would have approved of that – even though he did start out on
that hateful path when he was Saul.
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)
So the enmity between Jews and Gentiles was finished
because religion killed Jesus? Illogical, and incorrect – unfortunately the
worst enmity was yet to come – in the form of the Jewish Holocaust.
And Paul’s 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, we must ask, is this the word of God, or even 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 says he
does not try to “curry favour with men”, nor seek honour:
“ 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)
But he overlooks his own attempts to do just that in a
previous letter (2 Corinthians:12) where he tries to elevate himself to Apostle
status by claiming Divine visions and revelations. All religions are driven by
power and status for its officers. Paul sought “honour from men” along with the
best.
In this letter, 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 obviously did not believe that he would die : “we who are left alive shall join them”.
So, if this belief was proven wrong – what reliance should we place of his other
beliefs?
TIMOTHY
In this letter, Paul firstly 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 still OK:
“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
Thus 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 Paul “turned his back on
the truth” – but because in his pre-scientific day, the Garden of Eden and Adam
and Eve was “S” Scripture – proof. But what can we say about men who, today,
still turn their back upon scientific truths through fear – or who cynically
perpetuate myths and falsehoods to maintain their own power?
PAUL’S LETTERS EVIDENCE THE NEED FOR THE WRITING OF
GOSPELS
Paul’s letters give evidence of problems within the
Jesus movement – for example, about the role of women; the need for
circumcision; how Jesus was able to be killed if he was God. We can see the
need to construct doctrine to settle these disputes and misgivings (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 Jesus – or even of
God – to authorise doctrines. So the Gospels were motivated more to authorise
doctrine and settle disputes between factions, than to keep the real Jesus of
history alive.
DID PAUL WRITE THE LETTERS ASCRIBED TO HIM”
There is debate in the world of biblical scholarship
as to which letters were actually written by Paul. 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
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, changed, invented, in all the proselytizing? I like the
approach of Bible scholar 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
PAUL’S LETTERS – THE WORD OF GOD?
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 constructing a House – much like
the old one that killed Jesus. Paul is a good example of the issue Vermes raise
above, about the difference between “what Jesus himself taught” and “what has
been taught about him”.
Now for the letters most likely not written by Paul.
HEBREWS
Regarded by the majority of 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 Alexander’s Macedonian Greeks and the Romans (twice
already – eventually three times). The
“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 to come with the Diaspora accelerating, many
pogroms, and eventually, the Holocaust. The writer works up the doctrine that
Jesus’ execution should not be represented as 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 author of this letter 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)
Are these the words of your god? Like the rest of the
Bible, they appear more 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 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 of the Jewish Scriptures. 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 all,
including James, are 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)
There is doubt over the actual author of this letter.
Most scholars accept it as written by James, the brother of Jesus – and head of
the Jewish Jesus Movement in
1 PETER
More of the usual doctrine worked up by assertion –
by killing Jesus humanity saved itself. We are:
“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 the argument that faith is more important than
anything (especially knowledge). If it all seems a little far fetched just have
faith :
“more
precious than perishable gold is faith which has stood the test.”
(1:7)
But, like all the others, Peter continually 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); and: “The time has come for the judgement to begin” (4:17).
Wrong demonstrably, so how much for the rest of his
assertions? We were nowhere near “the end” – religion’s long and murderous
future lay before it. The murder of Jesus was only the beginning, 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).
The fact that Peter subscribed to the old creation
myths showed that he was not Divinely inspired – just floundering along with the
usual incorrect human beliefs of the day. There is some excuse for Peter but
modern evangelists still believe this in our scientific, 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…to be caught and killed” for our
“abominable lusts”? Along with fear of a brutal, primitive god, guilt is the
House of God’s main card. Our animal bodies must have lusts – essential to
continue the species – and the Church makes a living out of making us believe
they are “abominable”. What exactly is there to be ashamed of? Did we make
ourselves wrongly perhaps? But God made us. Should we be ashamed of the way God
made us? 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)
Continually apprehensive about the imminent coming of
the Lord, and guilty about the “abominable lusts” all us “brute beasts” have –
in such a state we are easy meat for a religion which can sell us “Salvation”.
Neat, a lucrative formulae for a House of God. But is it the Truth?
1, 2 & 3 JOHN
In epistle 1 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 upon them, was proven as
the truth, to John’s mind, by the ever growing number of antichrists bobbing
up. The antichrists were any 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 Original Sin 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)
Imagine for a moment, a House founded solely on the
doctrine: “For God is love”. It would be much different to any founded on
original sin.
John nails it when he writes:
“But
if a man says, ‘I love God’, while hating his brother, he is a liar.”
(4:20)
But the Christians’ big problem has always been in
knowing who was their “brother”. Brother has always, unfortunately, meant those
who believe in the same religious 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 to the
schisms one Diotrephes was causing amongst the local congregation.
JUDE
Jude is concerned with the defence of the faith which
is in danger:
“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 the licentiousness of the “certain persons”:
“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 has been and remains the source of most of
mankind’s problems. Its “t” truths obscure the “T” Truth, its “g” gods obscures
any real “G” God – its truths and gods making the very idea of Truth and/or God
incredible. But religion and God are not synonymous, religion is just mankind’s
attempt to control God and to take the supposed power of the Divine unto
themselves. Religion killed Jesus and, in the hands of hateful people like Jude,
went on to kill millions more.
Jude turns hate into an art form, setting 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. And here endeth all that was
written about Jesus in the New Testament. Time to consider what we can know of
him.
******************************
THE HUNT FOR THE REAL JESUS
At the beginning of this exploration of the New
Testament for Truth, I said that Jesus was the most remarkable man in human
history, and that anybody searching for “T” Truth and any special meaning in
life would need to have knowledge of him. What do we know of him.
THE HISTORICAL
JESUS
Jesus only showed
up in two small blips on the radar of conventional history: a small mention in
Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities, and a
smaller (uncomplimentary) one about his followers in Tacitus Annals (15.44).
THE BIBLICAL
JESUS
Because Jesus was
either illiterate or chose not to write, the only source of any substance in
the quest for Jesus is the New Testament. And, as we have seen, it is hardly a
reliable historical document. 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
THE WORD OF GOD?
Many regard the Bible – the New Testament especially
– as “the Word of God”. But our examination, almost complete (only the Book of
Revelations to go) has rarely found words that could have been mistaken as Divine.
The Old Testament was full of creation myths, incorrect cosmology, fanciful
biology, brutal and primitive laws, unreliable legend posing as history, inveigling
praise to a human, vain, jealous, awful god. In short, the myths and imaginings
of pre-scientific man. And the New Testament, while more recent, relies heavily
on the truth of the Old. The Gospel stories ascribe Old Testament sayings to
Jesus and continually try to locate him in ancient prophecy – to establish his
authority through the Hebrew “S” Scriptures. The reliability of the Gospels is
problematical because they often contradict each other on facts, or carry
unique stories of Jesus not known to the others. They exhibit considerable
evidence of embellishment – even, at times, of being entirely invented.
HOW DID THE NEW TESTAMENT COME TO BE?
As time passed after the death of Jesus, more and
more gospels came to be written about his life, and they differed – many of
them widely. This allowed differing doctrines about Jesus to develop, causing
schisms and controversies among Jesus’ followers. Some of the more significant
factions among Jesus followers were the Gnostics, Arians, Ebionites (Jewish
followers of Jesus), and Marcionites. These various factions among Jesus’
followers disagreed with the doctrines Paul and his faction had developed from
his supposed revelations. But Paul’s “Christianising” Movement gradually gained
ascendancy amongst Jesus’ followers (probably because it targeted a wider,
Gentile audience, and did not insist on following the Jewish food laws and
circumcision). A selection of gospels by supporters of Pauline doctrine which
was declared official was the final weapon in the Christianising armoury.
Some gospels had been written in the first place in
support of Paul and his thrust into the wider Gentile world (Luke and John)
and, together with the Book of Acts and Paul’s letters, these “G” Gospels were
gathered to make up the New Testament by Paul’s supporters. An official canon
(the New Testament) to support the evolving Christian House of God was thus
cobbled together by the early Church fathers who followed Paul. The person
credited with first assembling the finally agreed upon Bible was Athanasius, bishop
of
The more Jewish-oriented Jesus Movement of James
(Jesus’ brother) was supported by the earlier Jewish gospels of Mark and
Matthew. This Movement devolved into the Ebionites, eventually disappearing
under the waves as Pauline Christianity flooded the greater Mediterranean area.
So, while the New Testament is our only substantial source about Jesus – and it
is a real source – we must be aware of the many motives and agenda that went
into its writing. These motives and agenda form filters which obscure a clear
view of Jesus.
What are these filters exactly – perhaps if we can recognise
them we may be able to remove or make allowances for them – to get a more
accurate view of the real Jesus of history? I have been able to identify
several – some to do with the mechanics of the journalistic process (the
Gospels are, after all, journalism) and some to do with proselytising – “H”
House building.
THE FILTERS BETWEEN US AND THE REAL JESUS
1. TIME AND ANECDOTE
The first filter is the considerable length of time
Jesus’ words and actions were carried in peoples’ memories before they were
committed to writing by the Gospellers. Scholastic consensus has it that the
gospels were written long after Jesus was executed – 40 years after, in the
case of the earliest (Mark), to 60 years for the latest (John & Luke). In
biblical times, carrying stories in what is called the “oral tradition” was
common amongst illiterate peoples, and they were probably much better at it than
we are now. But whichever way you slice it, the gospels are journalism – the
writing down of anecdotal accounts. Those of you who have had any experience of
reading journalism of events you have personally witnessed, will know how bad
it is at getting down the truth of events and words that are one day old – let
alone decades later when the bulk of first-hand adult witnesses have passed
away. Some say the Gospels are a special case – being “inspired” by God. In
that case why do they differ so much – to the point of frequent contradiction
about facts? Why would God inspire mistakes and omissions?
2. THE TRANSLATION FILTER
Another substantial filter in the process of the true
words and actions arriving in our hands is the need for translations between
languages. Jesus’ words were spoken in his Aramaic language. This was
translated into Greek (the language of the earliest complete Gospels we have),
then into whatever language we are now reading – often through other languages
on the way (like Latin, for example). The end result is that there have been
many significantly differing English language editions of the Bible over the
years, simply as a result of disputes over translations. The same applies, of
course, to other languages as well.
3. THE HAND COPYING FILTER
The hand-copying process – which, of course, was the
norm before the printing press gave us identical copies – was another source of
change to the actual words of Jesus. The oldest complete copy of the Gospels in
our possession dates from the fourth century (Margaret Davies, The Oxford History of the Bible, P. 50). Of earlier copies we only have incomplete
fragments. Even our oldest complete copy of the Gospels the end result of a
long chain of copying, each link in the chain stamped with the inevitable errors
that a lengthy manual process like transcription will produce. Some of the
first scribes doing the copying were often barely literate members of
congregations, rather than the trained and professional scribes they sometimes were
in later years. So our present New Testament (that the Christian House of God
is built on) is the latest of several differing translations of a copy of a
copy of a copy of a Greek translation of the anecdotes of several people about
words spoken originally in Aramaic. 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)
4. THE RELIGIOUS EDITING FILTER
And there are the filters of religious editing. The copyists
were often members of various factions (of which there were plenty in the early
Jesus movement before
5. THE MOTIVE FILTER
One of the densest filters between Jesus
and us is in the motives of the original Gospellers themselves. The earliest Gospellers
(Mark and Matthew) were motivated to proselytise their fellow Jews. This meant their
Jesus was closely tied to the Old Testament Scriptures in order to authorise
him in Jewish eyes. Whereas the later Gospellers (Luke and John) gave Jesus
different words and ideas – motivated by proselytising to a bigger target
audience – the wider Mediterranean world, Jewish and Gentile. The
followers of Jesus broke into factions, the two main ones being the Jewish Jesus
Movement led by Jesus’ brother James, and the Judeo/Gentile Christianising
Movement started by Paul. Factions formed over doctrine. The actual motive for
writing an account of Jesus, a gospel, was not to accurately record the man for
posterity but to promote the ideas of your own faction. There were many
factions and many gospels were written, but only the gospels of the two main
factions made the cut into the Bible to become “G” Gospels – and they diverge
on several important points.
Those who consider that the Bible is the
word of God need to explain why, once the first word of God was written (the Gospel
of Mark), why would God write another one? And why was it different? Wasn’t God
writing the truth when he wrote the previous Gospels? Luke writes that: “many have undertaken to set down an orderly
account” – but he decided that yet another account was needed: “so that you may know the truth” (Luke
1:1-4). So Gospellers obviously didn’t consider the Gospels weren’t written by
God, but by “many” – and they were in need of correcting.
6. THE SELECTION PROCESS IN COMPILING THE
NEW TESTAMENT
Later, another filter was installed
between the real Jesus and us – the final compilation process of choosing between
the many existing Gospels for inclusion in the official Christian canon. Athanasius
(4th century bishop of
EXAMINING THE DOCTRINAL FILTERS
We have identified several substantial filters
between us and Jesus, and motives associated with pushing the doctrines of
differing factions appear the densest. But were any of these doctrines spun
about Jesus of his making? Which did he create and/or believe himself?
I would say apparently, none. Jesus was killed by the
established religious House of his day. Why? Because he was a radical – by
definition against the establishment – which he saw as largely corrupt. Doctrine
is just another word for things officers of religion – the establishment – say
are the truth. Jesus was continually fighting against doctrine – the statement
that something is so, just because someone said so. He was often reported as
saying: “You have heard it said…but I say
unto you…” The Sadducees, officers of the religion of the day – guardians
of doctrine – were Jesus’ main target. And they killed him, in their vested
interest.
The Jews did not kill Jesus, he was a Jew and popular
– too popular. The Romans did not kill him either. One of the few facts all the
Gospels agree on, is that the Roman governor, Pilate, tried to avoid executing
Jesus and having his blood on his hands. Pilate knew Jesus to be innocent, and
only caved in to Sadducee demands because the officers of the Jewish House of
God faked a demonstration (actually made up of their own supporters). Roman
governors were nervous of riots because they put their ability to govern in a
bad light at home.
Let’s examine the main doctrines spun around Jesus to
see if we can discern the motivations behind their creation.
MESSIANIC DOCTRINE
The Gospellers – especially the early ones targeting
a Jewish audience – developed the doctrine that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah – come
to lead his people to victory against their oppressors, as was prophesised in
Hebrew Scripture. Did Jesus see himself as the Messiah; what was the motive
behind creating this doctrine; how did this affect what was written in the
Gospels?
The motives were simple, to get followers, Jesus had
to be made out to be as important as possible – there is no one more important
in Jewish mythology than the Messiah – their promised leader to glory in a
world of hostile outsiders who were constantly oppressing them. This affected
what was written in the early, Jewish Gospels. Because Micah in the Old
Testament said the Messiah, when he came, would be born in Bethlehem, the Jesus
story in those Gospels targeting a Jewish audience had to have Jesus (who was
actually from Nazareth) born in Bethlehem. This from Bishop Spong:
“Well after Jesus’ death, when Messianic
thinking began to swirl around him, his memory was wrapped in these traditions.
Jesus’ birthplace in
Spong, “Jesus
for the Non-Religious” (P. 20)
Jesus was not the
long anticipated Jewish Messiah, and there is no compelling evidence that he
thought he was.
SALVATION DOCTRINE
This doctrine was developed by Paul and other
doctrinaires to explain how the chief priests were able to have Jesus – the
Messiah, and the son of God – executed like a common criminal. Salvation
doctrine maintained that Jesus must have gone willingly to his death because he
could have called upon a host of angels to save him. To answer the obvious next
question: “Why didn’t he?” – we get this: he willingly sacrificed himself to save
us from our sins. Sins? Here we need another doctrine because, obviously, not
everyone is sinful (original sin was devised here – which we will discuss in a
moment).
So how did salvation doctrine affect Jesus’ words and
deeds in the Gospels? What happened on the cross was subtly changed in the
later Gospels to support the idea that Jesus intentionally sacrificed himself for
the purpose of our salvation. In the earliest Gospels Jesus cried out on the
cross in anger that God had forsaken him (“My God, my God! Why hast thou
forsaken me? – Mark 15:34 & Matt 27:46), whereas the later Gospels had him
just accepting his approaching death (“It
is completed” – John 19:30; “Into
your hands I commend my spirit – Luke 23:46). The words the earlier Gospels
gave to Jesus were probably fictitious too, because they were taken from the
Jewish Scriptures (Psalm 22) in the usual attempts to authorise Jesus with the
Jewish target audience by the Old Testament. But whatever their truth, they are
angry words about being forsaken and they did not suit the salvation doctrine
of willing sacrifice that the later Gospellers Luke and John developed. Nor did
talk of being forsaken suit the task of making Jesus out to be Divine – necessary
to Trinitarian doctrine, which John and Luke also developed for their target
audience.
ORIGINAL SIN DOCTRINE
Salvation doctrine rested on the notion that humanity
was in need of salvation. Some people were not obviously in need of salvation –
because they were obviously not “miserable sinners”. So a sin, the original sin
of just being human, was contrived by House of God theologians from the Jewish creation
myth of the Garden of Eden. We are all sinful because we are descendants of the
original humans Adam and Eve, who committed the sin of eating fruit from the
tree of knowledge of good and evil – they chose knowledge over blind obedience
to God – knowledge over faith. This is a bad sin as far as religion is
concerned, because the survival of the House of God depends on us believing
anything it contrives – on placing faith before knowledge – mythos before logos.
One of the early Church fathers (
One is tempted to imagine how much more would Western
humanity have been capable of, how much better would our history read if it had
believed Jesus own doctrine of the primacy of love – that humanity was of original
love rather than original sin? Would there have been the Crusades; the frequent
European interdenominational wars; the Inquisition; slavery in the
THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY
The Trinity was another doctrine developed by the
early Church Fathers. The wider Mediterranean world into which the Jesus
movement found itself thrust when largely rejected at home, teemed with gods –
and several of them were part human, part Divine – even the Emperor was seen as
such. To compete in such a world, Jesus had to be “D” Divine. But the Jesus
movement’s god was the “one true God” – and Jesus his only “S” Son. When risen,
Jesus became the Trinity: “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost”.
It’s impossible to know whether the real Jesus saw
himself as the Trinity – as God. Personally, I think he would have been
horrified at the idea – Jesus was devout, and he prayed intensely and often, to
a power above his own.
We can witness the development of the idea of the Divinity
of Jesus through Paul’s letters and the Gospels. It became, in time, key doctrine
for the growing House of God – Augustine wrote fifteen volumes on the subject in
an attempt to establish it rationally.
DISSENTERS TO DOCTRINE
But doctrines were not unanimously received, there
were dissenters – especially to the Trinity doctrine. The chief dissenters to
the Trinity were called Arians (named after the 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 persuasion 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
Debate about the “co-substance” of Jesus and God did
not end there, however, and the Arians out-manoeuvred their opponents and
baptised
The debate about the Trinity raged on but, like most
doctrines of the House of God, it was not about to be settled by reason:
“The
concept is essentially mystical, not
rational. As Thomas Aquinas was later to explain, ‘It is impossible to arrive
at knowledge of the Trinity of the Divine Persons by natural reasons.’ [
- Quoted from “Barbarians”, Jones & Ereira
(P. 227)
RESURRECTION DOCTRINE
The bodily resurrection of Jesus is another doctrine
of the House of God – perhaps the key doctrine. As we saw in our examination of
Paul’s letters, he went so far as to say that without Jesus’ bodily resurrection,
“your faith has nothing in it.” The promise implied in the resurrection of
Jesus was the biggest selling point for the developing Christian House of God. The
promise of an eternal life in a better place, wowed the Mediterranean world back
when life was brutal and short. Many desired a better life, being miserable in
their subjugation to
The later Gospels, Luke and John, stressed salvation
and physical resurrection was available for all converts – not just the Jews.
Luke and John had nothing of Jesus stating he had come only for the 12 chosen Jewish
tribes of God, or referring to Gentiles as pigs – as in casting pearls before
swine – (Matthew 7:6), or dogs – as in feed my children before the dogs (Mark
7: 26-9). In Acts we see how recruiting the Gentiles was authorised by God in a
dream given to Peter. Bodily resurrection was universally popular doctrine –
compared to the Messiah doctrine which only appealed to the Jews.
THE DARWINIAN MOTIVES OF DOCTRINE
The doctrine of physical resurrection is driven by
Darwinian animal survival motives. The majority of those who shelter in the House
of God do so out of the fear of death, and follow Paul – who feels that
Christian faith has “nothing in it” if
the physical resurrection of Jesus was not fact (1 Cor. 15:13 & 16-17). The
House of God, by adopting Paul’s narrow vision of the importance of Jesus,
became about the body rather than the spirit/self, about Darwinian motives of
physical survival rather than about spiritual growth. 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 3 (Along the Road to Truth) that the human condition is to be a
spiritual being with an animal body. We are not our bodies, and 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 it can happen. If
it can happen, it will, and as many times as needed. 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 the
physical body. He brought messages which are self-evident if you cut through
the fog of religion, Truths which are not only crucial to our spiritual selves
taking fully the opportunity that life in an animal body on a physical plane
offers, but which show us the way to really en-joy, the physical experience as
well.
But how about:
STORIES THAT PROVE DOCTRINE
How about those
other stories that “prove” the doctrines of the Christian House of God. Stories
that are crucial to its members’ understanding of, and faith in, Jesus as
Christ – the “Anointed One”?
THE MIRACLE
STORIES
The Gospels have
many stories of miracles 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 likely to be embellishment.
If Jesus did miracles in front of people in the provinces outside of
Being a very
spiritual person it is likely he may well have cured some people who had
spiritual problems – the casting out of “demons” was a frequently reported
miracle. It was a zealous, hysterical age, and Jesus’ wisdom cut to the bone.
THE RESURRECTION STORIES
The promise of resurrection for all believers is the
biggest draw-card for the Christian Church. So, the question must hang in the
air – was Jesus’ resurrection invented for proselytisation purposes, or did it
actually happen?
What can we know about the truth of the resurrection?
We only have the Gospels here, and, as is not
uncommon – they record different “facts” on the matter. For instance, the
Gospels disagree about where and how Jesus’ body was entombed, about Jesus’
various reappearances, about the dead but risen Jesus eating a meal with his
disciples, and about the “Doubting Thomas” story of actually touching his
physical body – but they do agree on one aspect of the resurrection story – the
empty tomb was discovered by the women among Jesus’ followers. If the
resurrection story was an entire concoction, the Gospellers would not have
given the role of confirming the disappearance of Jesus’ body to women. As John
Dickson puts it :
“…simply,
if you were making up a story about a resurrection and you wanted your fellow
first-century Jews to believe it, you would not include women as the initial
witnesses.”
John
Dickson, (“Jesus – a short life” P. 126)
He also quotes Professor Graham Stanton (
“…were
well aware of customary attitudes to the testimony of women, but they simply
recorded the traditions they received, even though they would have carried
little weight in arguments with opponents.”
(ibid. P. 126)
Another point to be considered is the fact that, after
Jesus’ death, his previously cowardly disciples and followers turned
miraculously into brave martyrs. Many of them went on to suffer brutal deaths
(including his brother James) in his name, whereas before his death they denied
him and/or were not even present at his trial or execution. The disciples seem
genuinely portrayed throughout all the Gospels as very human – commonly not
understanding Jesus’ wisdom and often grumbling, backsliding, and/or bickering
about who of them was the most important – “genuinely” because there would be
no proselytising benefit for the Gospellers in negatively embellishing them in
this fashion. So what could have happened at this point in history to these
very ordinary, previously cowardly, followers of Jesus to galvanise them into
heroes of the movement which arose after Jesus’ death? Men who previously were too
afraid to stand by Jesus in his final hours of need before Pontius Pilate and
on the cross? These Gospel stories of abandonment are not likely to have been
invented because they serve no doctrinal or proselytising purposes.
Ordinary, fallible, faint-hearted men do not
transform themselves so quickly and completely without some sort of epiphany.
So what happened? For me, 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. Whilst I have not had any
experiences myself, I had a couple of great ones told to me first-hand by credible
and reliable friends who had nothing to gain in the telling – only their
credibility to lose. David Fontana’s book (Is
There An Afterlife?) about paranormal experiences like these, is
corroborative of my friend’s experiences and worth reading here. Beyond
reasonable doubt, something extraordinary happened to the disciples.
VIRGIN BIRTH
Another miracle
spun around Jesus. But it was not a story unique to Jesus, several characters
in Greek and Roman mythology were Divine/human. Even the Roman Emperors were
seen as part God, part man. If the followers of Jesus had any chance of selling
him in competition with the many gods available in the wider Mediterranean
world he had to be divine to compete. There is no reliable evidence that Jesus
regarded himself as born of a virgin, by a God.
We will never
know the full truth of the miracle stories, belief in them can only remain a
“statement of faith” – for those who need them in order to believe Jesus was
special. And there are other stories, crucial for some.
BUT A SPECIAL
MAN APPEARS
Because of all
the concocted miracle stories, doctrines, and the apparent motives and agenda
of factions, finding the real Jesus in the Bible is going to be difficult. But
through the clouds of proselytising, and the doctrinal mists – still comes a
man, a very special man – Jesus.
THE REAL JESUS
A man who was wise beyond his fellows; a man who had revolutionary
ideas of love over hate; of forgiveness over revenge – a man who had a greater
idea of what it could mean to be human. A man who rebelled against tainted
authority, who threatened the entrenched power and prestige of the officers of
the House of God of his day to such an extent that they killed him. A
disciplined but liberal man; a tough, but spiritual man; a man who believed in
God but not in theism.
Can we get closer to which words are truly his in a
Bible established as unreliable?
RADICAL YET WISE
We know Jesus was
a radical – he was executed for challenging the authority of his religion’s
officers and their received beliefs. He stood out from all the other preachers
and prophets of the day because he was not the same-old amplification of the
same old Scriptural message. Those passages of the Gospels where he challenges the
Scriptures: “you have heard it said (an
eye for an eye) but I say unto you (turn
the other cheek)”; “man was not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath for
man”; “let he who is without sin cast the first stone” – are likely to be his
words. As are the words that carry a radical idea of what it could mean to be
human: “Love your enemies, anyone can love their friends”; “If you are asked
for your coat, give also your cloak”; “If you are asked to walk a mile, walk
two”; “Enter by the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is easy that
leads to destruction, and many take it.”
Any fool can be
radical, but radical and wise is special.
TRUTHS
Jesus brought
enduring “T” Truths – things that are true for everybody, everywhere, all the
time. Truths like: love one another; turn the other cheek; do unto others; by
their fruits you shall know them. Words which convey ideas that tower over the
“t” truths of those with more venal agenda.
DIFFERENT
Jesus brought
words of love in an era which was brutal. Words of forgiveness when revenge was
usual. But Jesus went beyond forgiveness for our enemies and said that we
should love them as well – “for anyone can love their friends.” These were the
different words of a different man – and Jesus was asking us to be different
too.
WHICH WORDS ARE NOT
LIKELY TO BE HIS?
Conversely, words
which convey the same old ideas from the Scriptures are more likely to have
been placed in Jesus’ mouth by the Gospellers to give him scriptural authority
in their efforts to convert their fellow Jews. Words often lifted straight out
of the Scriptures (with inverse logic, evangelicals often say that this proves
the Old Testament as true because the Scriptures have been “fulfilled” in Jesus
– whereas it was actually the Gospellers trying to prove Jesus by locating him
firmly in the Old Testament). Jesus would not have been concerned with doctrines
either – they were developed later by people like Paul who were building a
House, and needed doctrine to answer certain questions and solve certain
problems. So words in the Gospels obviously aimed at supporting Messianic,
Trinitarian, Salvationist, and Original Sin doctrines of the developing House
of God are likely to be embellishments.
Using these
criteria, let’s peer into the Gospels mists for the real Jesus. We’ll start
with the basics because Jesus gets the barest mention in secular history, some
sceptics doubt he even existed.
1. Jesus existed –
·
The
early Jesus movement was definitely inspired by a real person – you don’t just invent
a character then go out and die brutal deaths for that invention – people don’t
“die for a lie”.
·
Jesus
was a much more radical and bigger character than the people who wrote about
him – beyond their capacity to invent.
·
You
can’t invent a message you can’t comprehend. Jesus was often on another level –
the disciples and doctrinaires didn’t
quite understand him.
2. Jesus was human. The following stories
from the Gospels are unlikely to be inventions or embellishment because they do
not help the Gospellers’ mission of proselytising their fellow Jews, nor help establish
developing doctrine. They show he had human fears and weaknesses, and some show
he could even make mistakes :
·
In the
garden of
·
Jesus
frequently showed very human frustration at the slow wits and personal flaws of
the disciples and others around him.
·
Jesus
could be angry and violent – as when he attacked the money-changers and vendors
in the
·
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 very Jewish. Many members of the
Christian House of God forget this.