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 in these three essays on the meaning of life, to explore life for any
special meaning and ultimate purpose. By “special meaning” I refer to meaning
beyond our personal meanings, and by “ultimate purpose” I mean purpose beyond the
animal. In short, to explore for “T” Truths beyond our own, relative “t” truths.
To that end I will
examine in the first two essays the beliefs of the two institutions who claim
to house the answers to the question of the meaning of life (or the lack of it)
– the House of God and the House of Disbelief. In the third essay I will
explore for Truth without the walls of “H” Houses
This first essay
is an examination of the House of God, but before setting out on any voyage into
the storm-tossed waters of religion I think it is important to nail one’s
colours to the mast, because the whiff of Huxley’s “proselytizing zeal” will always
be present. In the vast arena of faith, people seem to have to convince others in
order to convince themselves?
So, here goes.
I had a
conventional, but low-key, Christian upbringing at an Anglican boys-school. What
little orthodox Christian faith that was successfully instilled in me at school
was demolished at
Do I subscribe to
any ideology or any philosophical school of thought? While I like to think I am
not an ideologue, everybody who gets out of bed in the morning is a philosopher.
I am not an atheist, nor a theist, nor an agnostic.
Is such a
position logically possible? While my experience of life has led me to believe
in a Divine, I find theism’s god primitive and incredible. I find some of
atheism’s arguments sound, but its attempts to explain all of human behaviour
in terms of evolutionary theory ideological and incomplete. Agnosticism doesn’t
suit me because, while I don’t claim to know the nature of God, I do believe
there is something worthy of the name. Deism has some appeal, and pantheism seems
logical because the original energy which became the material universe at the
Big Bang must be – at the very least – of any “D” Divine. Also I admire Jesus
and try to follow his precepts towards my fellows as often as I can. Those who
insist on labels could call me a Christian-Pantheist? But I like to think I
have an open mind and reserve the right to change my philosophical position at
any time – as we, hopefully, discover some Truths during the course of this
exploration on the meaning of life.
So off we go.
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 Book – a “B” Book – closed, unchangeable,
because supposedly written and/or inspired by God.
Some will have
some reservations about critically examining the House of God.
ISN’T IT
PRESUMPTUOUS TO CRITICALLY EXAMINE GOD?
This essay critically
examines the House of God – religion – not God. Many equate religion with God,
but did God design the House of God and/or does God really dwell within? These
are questions we will examine in this essay.
THE HOUSE OF GOD
DOES GOOD – WHY EXAMINE IT?
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 succour in times of personal crisis. It has
also set standards of moral behaviour valuable to civil society. I still presume
to examine the House of God because these valuable roles are diminishing as its membership crashes
– most roles now largely taken over by secular institutions like neighbourhood centres, secular charities, service clubs, state
hospitals, and government agencies. Figures from the 2004 National Church Life Survey
show that Roman Catholic numbers were down 13%; Anglican down 2%; Uniting down
13%; Lutheran down 8% – and, further, very few of these people still identifying
themselves as Christian actually attend church on any significant basis. Some
say the young are becoming more religious, but 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 just 9% of that generation. Attendances have been falling
for years and many churches have been shut, abandoned or turned into homes and
restaurants everywhere you look. Weddings are increasingly being celebrated in
secular garden ceremonies, funerals in funeral parlours, and christenings at backyard
barbeques.
RELIGION IS MEANINGLESSNESS’
GREATEST ALLY
I also presume to
examine the House of God because it appears to me to have become meaninglessness’
greatest ally – its incredible meaning of life turning people away from the
very idea of life having any special meaning. Our rational age of enlightenment
has shown religion’s model for the meaning of life (a one-off opportunity for
salvation) to be irrational, incredible. The House of God holds there is no
mystery when it comes to Truth – my way or the highway – it’s all in the Book.
Most have chosen the highway.
THEISM GENERATES
ATHEISM
As education
(especially scientific) spread through society from the nineteenth century, more
people became aware that religion’s Truths were just “t” truths. Religion’s “g”
god (a brutal male figure from ancient tribal imaginings) became – beyond inadequate
– the generator of atheism. An exposure to religion in the family of birth has 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; Sigmund Freud came from a very religious family. Many influential
atheists have spread the gospel according to meaninglessness as a reaction to the
incredabilities of religion learned in the bosom of the family.
FUNDAMENTALISM
I also presume to
examine the House of God also because fundamentalism is on the rise within its
walls. From the above 2004 survey Assemblies of God are up 20%, and Christian
City Churches up 42%. Even in orthodox Churches like the Anglican Church,
evangelicals (who believe in and preach the literal truth and inerrancy of the
Bible) are gaining power. In an enlightened age, an increasing number of people
within the walls of the House of God, are retreating to literal, fundamental, evangelical,
scientifically ignorant beliefs (like the Garden of Eden, Noah’s Ark, and that
the world is merely 6000 years old).
HOLOCAUST
SCENARIOS
But fundamentalism
is beyond ignorant, it is extremely dangerous. We all know about Muslim suicide
bombers and their “B” Book-inspired murders of innocent men, women, and
children – but how many know that the biggest selling series of books in the “Christian”
world at this moment is the “Left Behind” series of novels (La Haye &
Jenkins). Inspired by the Bible, these novels revel in the torments inflicted upon
non-believers when Jesus returns to Earth (after an “end of days” holocaust
scenario):
“The blood
continued to rise. Millions of birds flocked into the area and feasted on the
remains…and the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of
the winepress, up to the horse’s bridles, for one thousand six hundred
furlongs.”
“Glorious Appearing: The
End of Days” pp. 250, 260.
The continuing
invasion of Palestinian lands in the East Bank region is being driven by Jewish
fundamentalists who believe their god will come and rule over the Earth after a
holocaust scenario – once they re-settle the ancient boundaries of Biblical
Israel.
Fundamentalists
of all stripes – Jewish, Muslim, and Christian – not only cherish the notion
that God will come to reign on Earth following a holocaust 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
“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 the importance of role of the wrath of his god in Christianity:
“One of the
gravest weaknesses of contemporary Christianity … is the little attention paid
to the wrath of God.”
“The Age” (Newspaper –
Jensen’s “wrath
of God” played a big role in the history of the House of God. Its history is
another reason why I presume to examine the House of God.
THE BLOODY
HISTORY OF RELIGION
Many, if not
most, of humanity’s wars and appalling cruelty had direct religious causes (for
example: the many European wars, the Inquisition, the Crusades) or they had
religious imprimaturs (the brutal invasion of Britain by William the 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, for example, the Catholic-Huguenots
battles in
The House of
God’s growing political power is another reason why it needs examination.
THE POLITICAL
POWER OF THE HOUSE OF GOD
In
RELIGION IS
DARWINIAN, NOT SPIRITUAL
Another reason
why I presume to examine the House of God is because our religions, which
should be the drivers of our spiritual evolution, are more Darwinian than
spiritual – concerned with power; with bodily survival for eternity; with the avoidance
of Divine punishment; with inflicting punishment on disbelievers. Religions work
on the old carrot and stick method – a method that has been used by successful
dictatorships since human society began. Religions, rather than being the drivers
of our spiritual evolution, as they should be, are the biggest block in the
road.
In fact, religion,
appears to see life as some vast game – which can be won by gaining the
greatest number of converts – and by any means possible. Witness the seemingly
endless number of paedophilia cases which are hushed up so as to not weaken your
Church, your “team”. Witness also the murderous ends the Islamist
fundamentalists will go to, to turn the world Muslim.
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 (their
book, “The Five Gospels” is an attempt to determine what Jesus really said). And
there are many religious scholars within the House of God seeking the Truth
rather than seeking to sell religious truths, doctrines, and dogmas. But with
the growth of fundamentalism and Bible-based evangelicalism, it does not look like
the Truth-seeking people are winning.
In total, all of
the above are why I presume to examine the House of God.
But some will be
asking another question altogether:
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 – and it remains
philosophy’s most important question. “Important”, not because there is some
pathetic god out there who needs our praise and worship, or a fearsome, brutal
god that we need to inveigle for our eternal bodily survival, but because in
the seeking of a “G” God we may come to meet the commandment of Socrates – one
of our wisest – to examine life. We may come to more closely understand the
basic unity of every thing and every body – all emanating from the originally
existing energy. There doesn’t “have to be a God”, but in the search we may find
our selves.
So, on to our
examination.
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 Jesus – 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); calling for forgiveness of your enemies because they
too were God’s children. Jesus called for us to actively do good (rather
than just refrain from doing bad).
The purpose of the original Jesus movement was admirable.
What happened to it?
It became a religion, it became institutionalised as
an “H” House – the official religion of the
COMFORT
Firstly, comfort. There is nothing wrong with a
little comfort – it is a valid purpose for a genuine House of God. Life is 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. All humans,
uniquely within the animal kingdom, live with substantial existential angst
because of our unique consciousness of mortality. Humanity needs a little
comfort to keep functioning. But the Christian House of God harbours a wrathful
god of an ancient desert tribe – the brutal male god of a hard land, out of a
brutal time. A god that gives love only conditionally – when certain rules about
worshipping him are met – and metes out punishment for eternity when they are
not. In other words, it is 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 – others denied the comforts of an all-loving God, and a credible
special meaning of life.
CONTROL
Secondly,
control. The other main purpose of the House of God was control over life
through control over God. The House of God’s god was controllable because he
was a man, a father, controllable through all the usual masculine weaknesses
and vanities – by worship, by praise, by animal sacrifice and, because he was
jealous, by sole worship. This “F” Father figure was omnipotent, omniscient,
omnipresent. He can’t have been too omniscient because he seemed to be never
aware when he was being schmoozed?
POWER
This brings us to
the third purpose of the House of God – power. Religion is used to get power
over the hearts and minds of people. And through the power of the people, the
officers of religion had achieved power for themselves over secular
governments, over other religions, over other countries. As discussed already
above, power is achieved by recruiting the most numbers to your god’s banner – all
Houses of God being like clubhouses for a “team”. As in sport, self-esteem is
available from the power of your team – even the individually powerless can become
empowered by being a member of a winning team.
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 power over the people
using their resentment and hate of the upper classes). The first members of the
Jesus movement were also brave men and women who often died brutal deaths for
their beliefs. Jewish scriptural orthodoxy was zealously guarded by the
religious officers of the day, and introducing new ideas which lessened their
power of was dangerous – as Jesus’ execution demonstrated. Going against the established
Roman gods and the vested interests of the
A TOOL OF STATE
In time, the Roman establishment also came to
recognise the political potential of the meek and mild, law-abiding philosophies
of the Christian religion – Christianity exhorted even slaves to be obedient to
their masters and wait for the more important next life for their (eternal)
freedom. Emperor Constantine, cynically (he did not take on Christianity
himself until his death bed) latched onto Christianity as a tool of state to
counter the instability that existed in the empire after his struggle to
replace Diocletian. Christ’s simple teachings had already become highly
embellished by doctrinaires like Paul, but this period of Roman
institutionalisation is when the last vestiges of the spirit of the original Jesus
movement became corrupted – taken on board by the
FABRIC
The spiritual
fabric of the House of God is admirable – comforting walls and roof of
Christian fellowship and charity. The physical fabric of the House of God is
beautiful – architecture, art, music – inspired and inspirational in turn.
But,
unfortunately, a crucial part of the fabric of the House of God is deeply
flawed – the foundations.
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
black and white – written by God. But such certainty is only available to those
who can suspend their rationality – an essential task in the eyes of 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 our 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 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.
It is no
exaggeration to call the Bible the foundations of the House of God. Jesus is also
pivotal to the Christian House of God, but the Bible contains the only record
of what Jesus said and did.
The integrity of the
House of God is dependant upon the integrity of the Bible. It is necessary to
examine the Bible.
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 mainly the New International version of the Bible,
and occasionally the New Revised Standard
and the King James 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 and/or allegorical 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 assertions of the fathers of the Christian
House of God – like their doctrines of salvation and original sin – arise from the
Garden of Eden myths of Adam, Eve, and the serpent (and sink or swim with it). The
New Testament is firmly founded 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 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
So, if even 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 in many places a continuous fossil
record of lifeforms in rock strata laid down over millions of years – from simple
lifeforms at the deepest to more complex closer to the present surface regions.
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 through our shared DNA (for example, we have 65%
similar DNA to bananas and 98% similar DNA to chimpanzees).
HOW CAN THE WORD OF GOD BE WRONG?
Those who believe the Bible to be the word of God
have to ask themselves how could God get it so wrong? If it was just inspired
by God, why inspire mistakes? The biggest problem (and the reason why the
THE FUNDAMENTALIST APPROACH
Fundamentalists nip this sort of dangerous problem 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
Genesis 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 constantly and successfully
on the other.
Beyond reasonable doubt the author of the Bible’s creation
stories was ignorant of cosmology and biology’s Truths. 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 read these parts of the Bible as charming metaphor and allegory. However,
as discussed, key doctrine of the “modern” House of God rests on a level of belief
of the Garden of Eden story – original sin (allegorised by Adam and Eve defying
god and consuming fruit from the tree of knowledge) is 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 still a big sin as far as the House of
God is concerned. Valuing knowledge over faith – logos over mythos – seeking for
the “T” Truth over the House of God’s “t” truth – is 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.
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! And not only dirty, but if
Moses “said to the people…do not go near a woman” – women were not even
“people”? Is this the word of God?
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
Moses gets the Ten Commandments from his god on
“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 the pages of his book are somewhat
spittle-flecked (being often as fundamentalist as the religions he criticises)
Hitchens does have a good point. Further, the Old Testament god not only fails
to proscribe certain evil things but 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 – just a god of the twelve tribes – every other person suitable
for slavery and ethnic cleansing?
SLAVE-TRADE RULES – OK?
Moses is even given other ordinances by the Hebrew
god at the same time as the commandments to govern the slave-trade. For
instance, selling your daughter into slavery is OK. But there are some
divine regulations:
“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, while beating your slave is OK, there are some
divine limits:
“ ‘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 word of God? Whose “T” Truth
is this?
INSTITUTIONALISING REVENGE
Moses also gets social and religious laws and
ordinances from this brutal “g” god which cement revenge into place (an eye for
an eye, a tooth for a tooth), laws which determine sexual relations, altars, festivals,
blood sacrifices, tabernacles, Sabbaths – and this strange little 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 quotes are supposedly the actual
words of “G” God – not allegories or metaphors for something else. These
commandments and laws form the basis of Torah – the underpinnings of the
covenant between the Jews and their god.
KILLING YOUR BROTHER, FRIEND, AND NEIGHBOUR IS OK
And while Moses was away receiving all these
commandments and ordinances, the Hebrew tribes waiting behind made themselves a
golden calf to worship. God was so jealous that the Hebrews were worshipping
another god that he got Moses to assemble the sons of Levi and say 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 people at the behest of
god who is jealous of a golden calf? “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel,
says … each killing his brother and friend and neighbour”?
A CONTRADICTORY GOD
God not only urges the Levi tribe to kill their
fellow Hebrews, but then makes the murderers “blessed” because of their ability
to commit pitiless atrocities against their brothers, friends and neighbours. But
Exodus later says this god is merciful, gracious, and forgiving?:
“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, the Bible is contradictory – describing its god
as “merciful and slow to anger”, while showing him to be merciless and quick to
anger – or we have a god who is inconstant and changeable? Supposedly a god
“abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness”
– but, as shown by the above episode, ready to brutally slaughter his chosen
people at the drop of a hat – for a minor misdemeanour – jealousy for a golden statue?
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE IDEAS OF FATWA AND JIHAD
This is the establishment of the idea of a Fatwa –
killing is OK, if in the name of a jealous god. Later this god will also
authorise Jihads against other tribes encouraging the killing of men women and
children to take their land. 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 goes on to decree:
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
Children who curse father or mother shall be put to death.
22:18 We should kill witches – “Do not allow a
sorceress to live” (paving the way for
Is this your “Lord thy 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 the slave trade:
“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 the ethnic cleansing starts (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)
And approving of infanticide, abduction, and 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? 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 Bible reveal anything about God, or
just about the people whose god this is?
Maybe a real God will reveal himself soon? Let’s try
the next Book:
DEUTERONOMY
God instructs more slaying of men, women and
children. More laws, about some about clean and unclean food. 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 supposed covenant between the Hebrew
tribes and their god. But are these the words of “G” God or the words of “m” man?
Are they Divine Truths or words invented by religious officers to maintain
their power over the people – words to keep the people believing that god is fearsome
and awful, words to persuade the masses that the religious officers have this god
under control – by knowing how he wants to be worshipped and sacrificed to?
Is the Bible, so far, the word of God – and if not,
when does it become “His” word – God’s Truth?
WHAT SORT OF GOD SO FAR?
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 some males ambitious for power? The
medicine men 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?.
SHOULD WE ADOPT A LITERAL APPROACH TO THE BIBLE?
“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 – and maybe not? We may get closer to a personal
answer to this question later when we examine Jesus the New Testament.
For me, the god that the Bible has shown us so far,
falls well short of any “D” Divine. Belief/faith in this god revealing more about
the nature of our self than about the nature of any Divine which may exist.
So let’s move on and examine the rest of the Old
Testament.
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 got to be “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.
Joshua’s generation knew what their god had done for
his chosen people, but 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. So, in
retribution we get more Divine pay-back by in the form of domination by their
enemies – the Philistines this time (you think they’d learn?).
Then 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 petty, 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
And we come to one of the biggest problems in the
philosophy of God and meaning – the so-called “Problem of Evil”.
JOB
In Job, the Problem of Evil is presented in the form
of the conundrum: why do bad things happen to good people?
When faced with this conundrum many loose faith in
the idea of God, and any belief in special meaning in life. Darwin, himself,
lost his own previously strong religious beliefs after his young daughter died
– he originally believed that, in natural selection, he had found God’s method
of creation.
Good people losing faith when bad things happen to
them (and/or good things happen to bad people) is a problem of religion’s own
making. By selling humanity the idea of a god who will interfere in day to day
life – on an on-call basis – in return for exclusive belief, correct worship
and sufficient praise, religion is setting itself up for a dump when this god
does not intervene on cue.
This so-called “Problem of Evil” – the existence of
evil in a world ruled by an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent, and interventionist
God – has recruited more followers for the House of Disbelief than any other of
life’s difficulties. A quick peek at life reveals to anyone and everyone that any
God obviously does not intervene positively for good people, and negatively against
bad people. Life in the relative universe is necessarily random – good and bad things
happening randomly to good and/or bad people.
Questions flow from this: is any God which exists impotent;
if so why bother to worship God; does God exist at all; if God does exist – 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 – the question 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
Paul considers the idea of true goodness – but concludes faith (believing
incredible doctrine) is better than good deeds – and that if Jesus was not
risen bodily then Christianity “had nothing in it”!? But we are getting ahead
of ourselves.
Job succeeds only in enraging his god with his doubts
and complaints. This god then threatens him with Behemoth and Leviathan (God
doesn’t seem to know that they were mythical beasts) and scares the shit out of
him. So Job apologised and praised his god again – thereby getting his enemies
reduced by god, his fortunes restored, and lived a long and fruitful life.
The Book of Job is yet more invention – designed by
the religious fathers who wrote the Bible to answer the most commonly expressed
doubt about god. They fall back on the usual tactic of power-brokers – punishment
or reward, carrot or the stick – if you believe in my god you will get
rewarded, doubt and you will suffer. This becomes a constant refrain in the Old
Testament as the chosen people of god have a lot more suffering ahead of them
yet.
And now we arrive at the next section of the Old
Testament, which turns praise of a needy god into an art form.
PSALMS
The themes of the Psalms cover deliverance from
enemies, thanksgiving, praise, flattery, longing, denunciation, vengeance,
comfort, judgement, punishment, woe, elation at an eventual (imagined) victory.
They are the supplications to their god of a people living in a hard land at a
brutal time – a people at the mercy of their stronger neighbours.
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 to their god. They are songs of 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 supplications
of the powerless to call God’s wrath down upon their enemies. They spring
largely from Darwinian motives of animal survival but do at times manage a
spiritual wonder at beauty and the more numinous aspects of life.
These Psalms are still used daily in the Christian
House of God. What does all this praise and worship have to say about the House
of God’s image of the nature of God? In a nutshell, the House of God must think
that God is a human, a male specifically – vain for our praise, needy for our
worship, and stupid enough to think that all this outpouring is genuine – we
really like him, we are not just inveigling him for our survival on this world
and our joy in the next?
I remember asking my religious studies teacher at
primary school why we existed, and his answer was: “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
Some say the Old Testament is verified by the life,
words, and actions of Jesus – and vice versa. For example, at Psalm 22 we find the
very words that Mark and Matthew ascribe to Jesus on the cross, and the very 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, however, impute different words to
Jesus on the cross. We will examine the motives behind the writing of the Gospels
soon, here suffice it to say that the Gospels were being written a generation
or two after Jesus’ death, and there was a struggle going on for the hearts and
minds of the people. Scriptural authority (finding authority for belief in Jesus
from the Old Testament) was important. We will examine this process later.
Although the Psalms appear to be basically 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 also 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. Maybe these words, even if
they not the actual words of God, could have been inspired?
“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)
But then fear raises its ugly head again – fear is lauded
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; that the world is only 6000 years old; in Noah and his
impossible
ECCLESIASTES
Ancient existentialism – meaninglessness rules OK? :
“ ‘Meaningless! Meaningless!’
says the Teacher.
‘ Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.’ ” (1:2)
But wait, there is more – wisdom is meaningless,
pleasure is meaningless, toil is meaningless, the bad sometimes prosper and the
good sometimes suffer. All good 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)
Capital “F” Fear of God – sort of sums up the Old
Testament.
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 …
(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.
(4:16)
Now we come to the prophets.
The Prophets of the Old Testament were people supposedly
favoured by God to receive revelations, visions, even his very word. What “T”
Truths do the prophets hold for us – what evidence for us to consider
concerning the existence of a “G” God, and what information about “His” nature?
ISAIAH
Apparently God is sexist:
“The
Lord will wash away the filth of the women of
And:
“The Lord said:
Because
the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with outstretched necks glancing
wantonly with their eyes, mincing along as they go, tinkling with their feet;
the Lord will afflict with scabs the heads of the daughters of Zion, and the
Lord will lay bare their secret parts.” (3-16,17)
How could this sexism be the word of God, or inspired
by God? What sort of person could write this, and what sort could believe it to
be the word of God?
Apologists would say that this isn’t sexist – just
the product of a patriarchal society and the general culture of the
Isaiah was writing at a time of great instability in
the Promised Land. The Assyrians, Egyptians, and Babylonians dominated the
region –
When the neighbours definitively exerted their
superiority by sacking
Isaiah spends many verses describing how
“For the Lord will comfort
he will comfort all her waste places,
and
will make her wilderness like
her desert like the garden of the
Lord…” (51:3)
“Put
on your beautiful garments,
O Jerusalem, the holy city;
for
the uncircumcised and the unclean
shall enter you no more.” (52:1)
Isaiah was astray,
JEREMIAH
Jeremiah is a prophet who hears the “word of the
Lord” and prophesises it long and loud to the people of
“I
myself will fight against you with outstretched hand and mighty arm, in anger,
in fury, and mighty wrath.” (21:5)
In this way Jeremiah explained how the chosen people
of god were defeated – their “mighty” god was against them – he not only stood
by while they suffered three bloody defeats at the hands of the Babylonians,
but even aided the enemy to kill his people. He watched as the cream of
Is this the true nature of “G” God? – jealous, angry,
and petulant? Yahweh was also capricious – after using
HISTORY VS MYTH
That
Jeremiah was good at prophesising in the clear and
present danger the Jews were in, but not so good at the future.
“The
days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will raise up for David a righteous
Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice
and righteousness in the land. In his days
Some see this as a reference to Jesus (it was one of
the reasons some of the Gospels tried to trace Jesus to David) but the prophecy
was wrong – what was actually “surely coming” to the “righteous Branch” after
release from Babylon was ever-present domination by the Persians, Assyrians,
Egyptians, and the eventual conquest by the Greeks of Alexander, then the
Romans. Further into the future was a Diaspora and centuries, millennia even,
of persecution – humiliation after humiliation for the Chosen of Yahweh – how many
times did Yahweh have to teach his poor people a lesson?
LAMENTATIONS
Well named. This is a description of
It is grim stuff, ending with a sad little prayer to
their god for restoration.
“Why have you forgotten us completely?
Why have you
forsaken us these many days?
Restore us to yourself, O Lord, that we may be restored;
renew our days
of old –
unless you have utterly rejected us,
and are angry
with us beyond measure.”
(5:20-22)
Your heart goes out to them, how could you not have
pity on these people? If I was their omnipotent god, I would have restored
them.
All up, it didn’t seem to ultimately do the Hebrew
tribes much good being Yahweh’s chosen people. While, as we have seen
previously in the Old Testament, Yahweh did aid his people in the slaughter of the
innocents who originally occupied the land of milk and honey – man, woman,
child, and donkey – he couldn’t protect them when they came up against real
opposition like the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. The
priests of Yahweh, of course, insisted that it was more a case of “wouldn’t”,
rather than “couldn’t – and even had visions of how you could be, at one and
the same time, at the mercy and whim of your neighbours but still retain your
superior status as the chosen people of the one, true God.
The rationale for this is laid out in Ezekiel:
EZEKIEL
It was easy to be a prophet in the pre-scientific
days of yore – all it took was the claim of a “revelation” – a personal visit
from God. Such revelations usually came at a time of crisis. In Ezekiel’s case
he was suffering the twin crises of personal exile and his peoples’ loss of
faith in Yahweh (and, most likely, their loss of faith in himself – a priest of
that god). To me it appears that Ezekiel had something of a nervous breakdown –
the Old Testament says he exhibited strange behaviours – lying on one side for
390 days and then the other for 40; he was struck dumb; he walked around Tel
Aviv (
Nervous breakdown or not, Ezekiel was suddenly
hit by existential angst –thoughts that maybe his god was impotent rather than
omnipotent, maybe he had abandoned his people – or worse: maybe God didn’t
exist; maybe life had no special meaning – must have flashed through his head? Whatever
happened with Ezekiel, definitely the Jewish people had suffered a huge blow to
their status as chosen people of the one true God, and you could be sure that
Ezekiel would have lost status in the eyes of the people – as priest of a
failed god. Maybe the people of
Ezekiel began to report elaborate and bizarre visions
and messages sent to him by his god – these took all the heat off Yahweh and put
the blame of defeat onto those who had not worshipped Yahweh properly, and/or
who had turned to the gods of their more successful neighbours.
“Therefore
thus says the Lord God: Because you are more turbulent than the nations that
are all around you, and have not followed my statutes and kept my ordinances,
but have acted according to the ordinances of the nations that are all around
you; therefore thus says the Lord God: I, I myself am coming against you; I
will execute judgements among you in the sight of the nations. And because of
your abominations, I will do to you what I have never yet done, and the like of
which I will never do again. Surely, parents shall eat their children in your
midst, and children shall eat your parents; I will execute judgements on you,
and any who survive I will scatter to every wind. “ (5:7-10)
Nothing like a good bracing dose of the fear of a
brutal god to keep the flock in line! The leaders of the House of God today are
still using these tactics to retain their power, just as Ezekiel did. But, again,
for the purposes of our examination of the foundations of the House of God, is
this god – “G” God – are these “His” words, or just Ezekiel’s “g” god and his
own words?
Ezekiel tried to restore the status of his people through
his visions, even though, as captives, they were the bottom of the heap in
“The
first circle surrounding the city was the home of the king and priests, the
sacred personnel. The next zone, for the tribes of
“The
Great Transformation”, (Pp175-6)
There has never been a more persecuted people than
the Jews. Is it anti-Semitic to imagine that quite some of the hatred directed at
them over the years has been as a result of their unilateral declaration of superiority
and primacy in the eyes of God – and their insistence of separation from the “unclean”,
non-chosen goyim? I know I was offended when I first encountered it. The
Jewish, Old Testament doctrines of separation and favour in the eyes of God were
softened later during the Rabbinic period of their religion and under Talmudic
teachings – which stressed more the unity of humanity and that you did not
worship God properly unless you practised the Golden Rule to everybody and
honoured your fellow humans, whoever they were.
The Book of Job, with its lesson of the temptation of
a good man to test his faith, was most likely written during the Babylonian
captivity. The Old Testament was not set in cement as the word of God yet and some
Biblical scholars have traced Leviticus and Numbers – with their interminable
accounts of convoluted dietary requirements and bloody sacrifices – to the
captivity in Babylon, as well as the re-writing and editing of a great deal of
the Old Testament.
But, however they
managed to keep themselves superior in defeat, there still boiled within their
breasts thoughts of good old revenge – the previously quoted Psalm 137:8-9 (“Happy shall they be who take your little
ones and dash them against the rock!”) – being a good example. Good ol’
Yahweh, you’ve just got to love that god, haven’t you?
And, to top it off, some more sexist ravings. Ezekiel
quoting the very words of God:
“Again
the word of the Lord came to me: ‘Son of man, when the people of
Are those the words of your God?
DANIEL
Daniel offers more of the same. The mighty Yahweh has
only allowed his people to be beaten in order to teach them a lesson:
“All
In the Book of Daniel we get stories of surviving
fiery furnaces and lion’s dens. We also get a story that tries to cover up the
priests’ embarrassment of being recued by goyim, non-followers of Yahweh. Their
angle is that it was not the Zoroastrian Persians who rescued the Israelites,
but it was actually Yahweh who made it happen – he “gave” the Babylonians unto
the Persians:
“God
has numbered the days of your kingdom [Babylonian] and brought it to an end…your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes
and Persians.” (5:26 & 28)
Daniel also prophesises an end of times scenario –
the beginnings of the “Rapture” dreams much beloved of fundamentalists to this
day:
“There
shall be a time of anguish, such has never occurred since nations first came
into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who
is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth
shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting
contempt.” (12:1-2)
A great example of all Houses’ of God’s carrot and stick
method – what’s it to be guys? – everlasting life or everlasting shame and
contempt – the carrot or the stick? Am I too cynical in saying that this is a
contrivance of the priests to retain their power over the people even though
they find themselves defeated? Or is it the Truth – the word of God? It’s your
free choice – but I suspect your choice will define you rather than God.
HOSEA
It is interesting to list some of the chapter
headings of my copy of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. They pretty
much summarise all the prophets:
2:
4:
God Accuses
5:
Impending Judgement on
6:
A Call to Repentance
8:
9:
Punishment for
10:
11: God’s Compassion Despite Israel’s
Ingratitude
13: Relentless Judgement on
14: A Plea for Repentance
Same, same. Same old carrot:
“I
will love them freely, for my anger has turned from them. I will be like the
dew to
Same old stick:
“
Hear the word of the Lord?
MORE PROPHETS OF DOOM
The remaining prophets are: Joel; Amos; Obadiah;
Jonah (and the whale); Micah; Nahum; Habakkuk; Zephaniah; Haggai; Zechariah.
These prophets were largely a gloomy lot, writing
like those before them in the Old Testament, in times of great insecurity and
hardship – after their defeat and captivity by the Babylonians and the
destruction of their god’s
The people of
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 – many of them prophets – have the greatest
vested interest. Religions may start with some inspiration and/or revelation,
but usually devolve into a story of the struggle of the vested interest of the
priest classes to maintain their personal power, status and prestige – based on
their knowledge of, and influence over, a god. The history of the
Judeo-Christian religion is no different.
We will see soon what happened when Jesus stepped
onto the scene of this perpetual power struggle.
The last Book in the Protestant version of the Bible
is more of the same:
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 – carrot and stick to
the end – Yahweh will eventually be 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 Apocrypha. Phew!
CONCLUSION: THE OLD TESTAMENT
So, is there
anything in our examination of the Bible so far that would make us hold it as a
special “B” Book – the “T” Truth?
Is the Old
Testament the word of God? 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 the “T” Truth by using their products successfully every day?
Maybe mathematics is more truly the word of God? – the
physical universe is, after all, written in mathematics – we understand (and
alter) the universe through our sciences because we speak the language of the
universe (more of that in Essay 3).
INCORRECT HISTORY
Jewish archaeologists have found Old Testament
history to be often inaccurate. Israel Finkelstein (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 Dead Sea Scrolls” and: “Digging for God and Country”) have this
to say about recent archaeology conducted by them in the holy lands:
“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)
Other Jewish archaeologists agree – 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.”
Old Testament history had a religious and political
agenda when it was written – serving mainly as title deeds to the
INVEIGLING SONGS, POEMS, AND PRAYERS
As well as incorrect science and untrue history, the
Old Testament contains inveigling songs, poems and prayers. Some of them are
beautiful and moving. Sometimes they are spiritual but most often they are
Darwinian – having as their motive power – power over an omnipotent (but needy)
deity. Power over this god was supposedly achieved by meeting his needs and wants
– praise, worship, and sacrifice. The god of the Old Testament is very human –
specifically male, prone to fits of jealousy, anger, petulance, and capriciousness.
This god, Yahweh, was sexist (seeing women as unclean); brutal (approving
slavery and murder); and parochial (helping his chosen people slaughter man,
woman, child, and animals of other tribes). Does this seem like either “G” God,
or the “T” Truth about “His” nature, to you?
DID THE AUTHORS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 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 in pre-scientific times to explain their world,
and their special place in its history. Then it is the story of their struggle
to control that god for their benefit. It does not resemble, even a little bit,
the story of humanity written by a God of the universe. But, that they were
writing the word of God was never claimed by the many Jewish authors of the Scriptures.
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)
SO WHO WROTE THE
OLD TESTAMENT?
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.” Biblical scholars have defined much dynamism, much changing, much embellishment
and editing in the Old Testament:
“Israelites
developed their saga, changed it, embroidered it, added to it, reinterpreted
it, and made it speak to the particular circumstances of the time…During the
fifth and fourth centuries [B.C.] the
Bible was compiled by editors.”
The
Great Transformation, Karen Armstrong (Pp. 39 & 248)
The Old Testament was, then, not only written by man
but constantly changed to suit Israel’s changing situation, and finally edited
by officers of religion – including prophesies after the events prophesied. That
the Bible was “God’s Truth” was only claimed later when the Judeo/Christian “H”
House of God was being built.
·
DOES
THE OLD TESTAMENT CONTAIN THE TRUTH?
Even if the Old
Testament is not the word of God, does it nevertheless contain “T” Truths for
us?
The Old Testament is nowhere a search for “T” Truth, just
a collection of one ancient people’s “t” truths about creation, about their
history, and about their god – basically one long exercise in creating,
justifying, worshipping, praising and protecting a tribal “g” god. And he
needed plenty of protecting – Yahweh failed his chosen people repeatedly, and
needed constant rehabilitation by the prophets and/or the religious officers in
the face of defeat after defeat. Is it too cynical to notice that the power, jobs
and status of Yahweh’s priests depended on it?
·
IS
THE GOD OF THE OLD TESTAMENT THE ONE TRUE GOD?
The god of the Hebrew tribes was a hard god of a hard
land, a brutal god of a brutal time. Yahweh was a god made in man’s image:
male, jealous, and sexist. A brutal god who approved the ethnic cleansing of
man, woman, child, and donkey – who approved of slavery; who approved of the
stoning of rebellious sons – quick to anger and slow to forgive. A parochial
god, having one chosen people – but capricious – allowing their enslavement
just to teach them a lesson for worshipping other gods.
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
often 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!
The Jewish tribes have contributed to humanity
scientists, musicians, artists, educators, doctors, and other talented people
over the centuries – out of proportion to their numbers – but the god that
their pre-scientific ancestors created for them was a failure. In all of
history, there has never been a more persecuted people than the Jews – enslaved
by the Egyptians, dominated by the Assyrians, defeated and packed off into
exile by the Babylonians, rescued only by the intervention of the “goyim”
Persians, subjugated by Alexander’s Greeks, then repeatedly defeated by the
Romans. Their temple – their god’s only house on Earth – was destroyed twice
and the Jewish people left their “promised land” in an extended Diaspora.
Outside of the land of milk and honey the Jews suffered
numerous persecutions and pogroms over the centuries in the various countries
into which they had settled – culminating in the Nazi Holocaust – surely the
most heinous crime ever inflicted on any people. Through all this, the officers
of the Jewish religion maintained that their god was the “one true God” and
only allowed these terrible things to happen to his chosen people because they didn’t
get their religion right – it must be the only reason because the Jewish god
was omnipotent. Their special covenant with their god had been broken by the
people not following the numerous Torah laws properly, or worse, they had
strayed to the more powerful gods of their more successful neighbours. In this
way, the priests and rabbis kept their jobs and status, and the people took all
the blame – and in this way, guilt became an integral part of the Jewish
condition.
AVOIDING AN EZEKIEL MOMENT
The Jewish god, Yahweh, is also the god of the
Christian House of God. He was definitely Jesus’ god (as we shall soon see).
Our task here on this examination of the Judeo/Christian House of God is to decide
if this god is a real “G” God? For me, a parochial god cannot come close to any
real God which may exist. Any God can only be God of all people – and every
living thing. If we can approach God more closely, maybe we won’t have an
“Ezekiel Moment” – one where our bearings are suddenly lost when we are thrust
up against reality? There may well be a God, but we definitely have not found
Him/Her/Them/It/Us yet. We have quite a bit more of our examination to go yet,
let’s see if we can find a real God yet?
Our examination 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 for a
deeper, hidden Truths. But the Gospels, Letters, Acts and Revelations are surely
the “T” Truth – the “word of God”.
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 oral
tradition before being written down, and “honesty” because when they were finally
written down 40-90 years after Jesus’ death (between the oldest and most recent
Gospels) there were competing factions among the followers of Jesus. Many
gospels about Jesus were written, containing different versions of the Truth. Which
of those gospels became accepted as “G” Gospels (which were declared to have “apostolic
authority”) by the House of God was not finally decided (and assembled with
other writings as the “New Testament”) until 367 A.D. Bishop Athanasius of
It became an article of faith that the accepted
gospels, letters, and prophecies that form the “New Testament” – although known
to be written and assembled by man – were actually the word of God. And so it
is held, 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
We don’t have the original New Testament, the
earliest complete New Testament we now have was translated through other
languages (in the case of Jesus’ words from the original Aramaic). It is 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, to sum up, the accuracy
of the New Testament as a true copy of Jesus’ words and deeds is challenged by
the length of time they were carried anecdotally before being written down; by the
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.
But 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 the man called Jesus of Nazareth – arguably
the most influential person in human history. Therefore, to get closer to this important
man – and any “T” Truths about the meaning of life and/or about any “D” Divine he
might have had for us – we have to examine the New Testament. Any Truths will
inevitably be buried among the “t” truths of the various authors, but to find
them, we must read it in its entirety.
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 Mark
– the second Gospel in the New Testament. It is obvious that Matthew was largely
copied from Mark – it is held to be about 90% the same.
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 at all if he was not the father of Jesus? Mary was a
virgin impregnated by God, but Matthew, in an effort to authorise Jesus in
Jewish eyes, 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 Mary was supposedly a virgin when she gave birth
to Jesus – “visited” by an angel before marriage to 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 later 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 which started up after Jesus’ execution,
Jesus had to be firmly located within (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 – and, crucial to
this, he had to be descended from David and Abraham. Matthew must have hoped
everybody would overlook the fact that Joseph was only Jesus’ step-dad?
Another fact essential for Jesus to be accepted as the
Jewish Messiah was that he had to be born in
Matthew is obviously trying to establish Jesus more
authoritatively as the Jewish Messiah with his unique
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? This is
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,
instead, here depicted as the anticipated warrior king of the Old Testament.
Was this done, again, to proselytise the Jewish audience? Your free choice.
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 wished
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 the uniquely recorded “Sermon on the Mount” – that Jesus had
not come to threaten their present Jewish 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) whilst
appearing in the Bible before Paul’s letters, was actually written after them. We
will see later how factions developed among Jesus’ followers after his death,
and which faction a Gospeller represented affected what he wrote in his Gospel.
For example, Matthew was a Gospeller of what Wilson calls the “Jesus Movement”
– lead by Jesus’ brother, James, and more interested in fellow Jews in
Jerusalem. Whereas Paul was aiming at the wider Mediterranean world and the
Gentiles – his faction Wilson calls the “Christ Movement” – and Paul’s letters
de-emphasise the Jewish laws of the Torah. Later Gospellers like Luke and John
seem to be of this “Christifying” faction because they do write more for the
Gentile, wider Mediterranean audiences. For whatever reason, Matthew’s Jesus is
definitely anchored in the Old Testament.
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 – within all the Old Testament 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 – 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).
More like Socrates than Yahweh? (“We ought not to
retaliate or render evil for evil to anyone, whatever evil we may have suffered
from him” – Plato, Crito 47e, Jowett translation.)
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 ideas new to this part of the world! So,
is Jesus an unforgiving warrior – come with a sword to set families against
themselves and damn whole villages to hell for not listening – or is the real
Jesus a radical – preaching of not only forgiving, but of loving 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 – and after this 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, or even worse – lose – the revolutionary message of the
primacy of love and forgiveness. The baby of Jesus’ new message (love and
forgiveness) stands in risk of being thrown out with the old bathwater of religion
(fear – the main tool used by the officers of religion to keep the flock under their
power). For me, Jesus was a revolutionary, and the revolutionary words are more
likely to be his.
We are left with the big question, who was the real 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 was he 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 was he a new voice who risked and lost his
life by challenging his own violent religion to bring us a new message? The man
who was not afraid to contradict the old scriptures: “you have heard it said… but I
say unto you…”?
This 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.
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.
Matthew also 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 yet, 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).
In this last passage, Matthew 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 – an
equality for the least.
THE JUDGEMENT OF JESUS
In the scenes of Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate,
Matthew has the crowd call for Jesus’ execution. Pilate could find no case
against Jesus, but after washing his hands of the matter, he hands Jesus over
to avoid trouble. Matthew then has the crowd say:
“Then
the people as a whole answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’ “
(27:25)
This is a very anti-Semitic piece of writing – one
that has been at the root of much Christian persecution of the Jews over the centuries.
Did Matthew 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 – an example of later religious
editing of the “word of God”?
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
THE TRUTH?
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, once again, we have to decide which parts are true – for
our selves – the entirety, being contradictory, cannot be the “T” Truth. With
its contradictions, confusions and hidden agendas the New Testament asks
questions (of our selves), rather than answers them – questions ultimately only
answerable by us because the officers of the House of God (with some notable
exceptions) only give answers out of their vested interest. As with our
examination of the Old Testament, our answers, our choices – I suspect – will
not define God, or Jesus, but our selves.
Has the hint of a special man, in Jesus, started to
emerge? Possibly, 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, 10 years or so before Matthew’s Gospel, and some years after Paul’s
letters (circa 50-64 A.D. – first letter to last letter). Mark is the prime
source of the so-called “synoptic” (telling the same story) Gospels (Mark, Matthew
& Luke). Biblical scholars calculate Matthew copied Mark 90% & Luke copied
Mark 50%.
Mark’s story opens with quotations from the Old
Testament figures Malachi and Isaiah, implying that these Old Testament prophets
were foretelling Jesus – “the Lord” – and/or foretelling John the Baptist, who
was to prepare “in the wilderness” for the coming of God:
“ See,
I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you
seek will suddenly come to his temple.” (Mal 3:1)
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.” (Isaiah 40:3 & 5)
But Malachi’s Jewish god did not suddenly “come to
his temple”, Jesus expected “Him” any moment, the Jews await him still, and
meanwhile the temple has been torn down. Isaiah’s “glory of the Lord” is yet to
be revealed “for all people” to see. Both Old Testament prophets go on from the
passages quoted to try and engender the usual dose of fear into their restive
flocks – and to blame them for their present troubles and God’s non-appearance
so far – the same old religious trick of blaming the congregation for
non-delivery.
AUTHORISING JESUS THROUGH THE SCRIPTURES
This opening of Mark’s Gospel is an attempt (similar
to Matthew’s) to locate Jesus within the Jewish Scriptures, and thus authorise
him. This is a vital task if the Jews are to be successfully proselytised into
the Jesus Movement. Because this is the task he spends the majority of his
words on, it seems fair to say it is Mark’s main motive in writing his Gospel. Does
the Truth about Jesus become secondary to Mark’s primary task – as it seemed to
in Matthew? Let’s see.
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
NO ATTEMPT TO AUTHORISE LATER DOCTRINE
Mark makes no attempt to show Jesus was descended
from Abraham through David. These seem to be stories added by later Gospellers (Matthew
and Luke) as the Messianic doctrine about Jesus was devised – or added by later
Biblical editors/translators/copyists? Mark also 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 target the lager
Mediterranean world – and compete with the plethora of existing gods – their
man had to rival the Greek and Roman gods who were mostly of a human/divine
stature. Because Mark, the closest Gospel to Jesus we have, does not espouse
these Trinitarian doctrines it seems fair to regard them as later embellishments
– human, doctrinaire “t” truths, rather than God’s Truth? Again, dose this make
the Bible suitable as the foundation of any sound House of Truth?
Instead of establishing doctrine, Mark moves quickly
into Jesus’ ministry in
THE IMMINENT COMING OF GOD?
But all three Gospellers do agree on Jesus’ mistaken
belief about the imminent coming of God – within the generation of his present audience.
Mark tells it thus:
“ ‘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 as unreliable because that generation did not “live
to see it all” – we still await the “
JESUS’
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, complying “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 Gentiles as dogs (not to mention the story we shall read
later in Revelations about there being only twelve gates into paradise – one
for each of the twelve Jewish tribes)? I remember more extraordinary “words of
God” in Revelations – we shall examine them later.
MIRACLES
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 – so much for God caring equally for even the least of his creatures);
walked on water – and many more.
But Jesus went without honour in his own home-town of
“When
his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He
has gone out of his mind’.” (3:21)
In other places, Jesus was constantly mobbed by
crowds pleading to be cured.
A BIT OF OLD TESTAMENT FEAR
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.
WISDOM
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
There is a wisdom here which shines out – a wisdom
brighter than that shown by Mark in his other writing – a wisdom which seems to
have another voice – seems even to be approaching the Divine? And some of this
wisdom attacks the beliefs of the religion of the day (food laws; the Sabbath;
mixing with the unclean) – for this he would die.
LOVE
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 stories of Jesus’ crucifixion and
resurrection are different to Luke’s – 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
concerned to use the Old Testament to authorise Jesus in the eyes of their
fellow Jews. Luke writes 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, like Matthew, 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).
DIFFERENT
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, on the other hand, hadn’t bothered 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
DIFFERENT BIRTH STORIES
Luke and Matthew also tell different stories of the
actual birth. Luke has the story of shepherds being told about the birth of
Jesus by angels – which shepherds then trot off to tell Mary that Jesus is the
Messiah. Matthew’s story was vastly different – he had three wise men following
a star to Jesus (bearing him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh); Herod slaying
all children under two years old because he feared Jesus was a competing king;
and Joseph and Mary fleeing to Egypt to escape Herod (which just happens to neatly
fulfil another Old Testament prophecy: “Out of Egypt I have called my son” – Hosea
11:1). Whereas Luke has no slaughter of the innocents, or flight to
DIFFERENT GENEALOGIES
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, again, a totally futile exercise
if Jesus was virgin-born and not related to Joseph by blood. 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.
DIFFERENT STORIES
Luke has other stories that are unique – such as the
townsfolk of
DIFFERENT LESSONS
The lesson from the action is also different to the
lesson drawn in Matthew and Mark. Luke has Jesus teaching:
“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
Some truths of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are shared,
but some differ – and these are the “synoptic” Gospellers – supposedly telling
the same story. We can only conclude that they had differing agenda – Jesus’
words and deeds embellished (or, in some cases, even invented) to support the
doctrines of whichever faction they belonged to. Doctrine devising grew into an
industry as the originally small Jesus movement grew into an “H” House.
THERE WERE MORE THAN FOUR GOSPELS
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). There existed at that time many more
than the four which were eventually chosen to go into the New Testament, and those
who were driven to write another Gospel, to change the story, were just as
likely inspired by personal, or group, motives – than by God? Why would God
inspire/write another, differing Gospel if “He” had already written the Truth? We
cannot decide for ourselves which were Divine and/or inspired, and which not,
because we do not have them all. We have to rely on the Church fathers who did
the choosing – we will see in a moment if they were a reliable lot?
AN EVOLVING STORY
At this stage, all considered, the Gospels do not
appear Divine, bearing instead all the hallmarks of the work of men, writing at
different times during a dangerous, dynamic, and changing era (e.g. the zealot’s
war with Rome and the destruction of the Temple). The Gospellers were men who
were members of evolving factions and influenced by the evolving controversies
of the day. The Gospels trace an evolutionary story as the followers of Jesus evolve
– they do not resemble the “T” Truth, 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?
MAYBE JESUS HAD SOME “t” truths OF HIS OWN?
But, while the bearer of evident “T” 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 “
THE REAL JESUS?
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 as they hammered nails into his body? Or have the Gospellers worked
up an image of Jesus’ violent anger to scare others into following them? Nothing
has changed in the New Testament, fear is still the main conversion technique –
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)
MORE CARROT AND STICK
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 (unchangeable)
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
“Word of God” – therefore absolute and unchangeable.
SOME “T” TRUTHS
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)
UNIQUE LUCAN PARABLES
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 (originally lead by James, Jesus’ brother) had been largely rejected
by the Jewish population, and was 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 THE NET WIDER THAN THE JEWISH POPULATION
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. We will see more of the pursuit of a wider power-base in Acts –
also attributed to Luke. Luke’s unique parable of the Great Dinner is more
evidence that the Christ Movement (following Paul’s teachings) has turned its
back on the Jews as its main target audience. The strictly Jewish Jesus of the
earlier Gospels recedes into the past – and a little bit miffed:
“ ‘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.
MIRACLES
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 another Biblical 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)
Why would God, who cares for even the smallest of his
creatures (inasmuch as ye do it unto one of these the smallest of my creatures,
ye do it unto me) 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 could alternatively be read not as the ultimate act of personal forgiveness
I have taken it to be, above, but the forgiveness of people only because “they
do not know what they are doing” – i.e. killing God.
THE DIVINING OF JESUS
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, and a lot of questions and
criticisms must have arisen about the Jesus story (how were they able to kill
God?) and doctrine was developed to cope. Did Jesus see himself as Divine, the
Messiah, dying for our salvation? We will examine the process of doctrine (Messianic,
Trinitarian, Salvationist) development in more detail when we examine the other
late Gospel, John.
THE RESURRECTION
Luke’s “D” Divinely written and/or inspired words
describing the resurrection of Jesus are 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
TRUTH WAS NOT THE HIGHEST ITEM ON THE GOSPELLERS’ AGENDA
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
rewrote Mark by about 50%. Among the varying agenda of the Gospellers, recording
the exact Truth was apparently not uppermost. 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 probably reveal more about our selves – through what
we hold to be true – than about God or Jesus.
FAITH IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN TRUTH TO RELIGION
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, trying to look beyond our truths, and not interested
in sheltering within the “H” Houses the Gospellers were devoted to building.
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 Christifying of Jesus – moving him away from the original, more
Jewish, Jesus Movement that was headed by James (Jesus’ brother). After Paul,
and definitely during John’s time, the original Jesus Movement was largely
outpaced by the Christian “H” House of God. Jesus was now “Christ” – the chosen
one. 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 Jewish Jesus Movement – as it was in earlier
Gospels – has morphed into (or been out proselytised by) a movement which is
“Christifying” Jesus. 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.
UNIQUE STORIES
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.
THE DIVINING OF 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 with his sword):
“ ‘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.” (19:30)
THE NEED FOR A TRINITARIAN DOCTRINE
Embellishment? The “D” Divining of Jesus does seem to
be a later idea – Luke, the other later-written Gospel, also gives Jesus a human/Divine
end. The idea of human/Divine figures is a common one given to other people
living in the Mediterranean world (Emperor Augustus, for example) and if
Christianity was to compete for hearts and minds in this wider arena, a doctrine
of Divinity, like the Trinity, would be necessary.
DIFFERENT “FACTS”
As well as different versions of
WHY FOUR GOSPELS?
You can only surmise. John, like Luke, appears to be
trying to counter the idea (doubtless being peddled by other competing
religions) that the execution of Jesus was truly a defeat – proof that Jesus
was not special – not the Messiah – just another failed prophet. Trinitarian
and Salvationist doctrine attempted to answer this thorny question, viz. Jesus
was the son of God who could have brought down a legion of angels to save
himself – had he wanted to live – ergo he must have wanted to die. Why? God had
so much love for us that he sent his only begotten son down to Earth to save
its inhabitants. So we saved ourselves by killing Jesus!?
Personally I would have thought that this might have
increased our sins way more. Many hours were spent, and candles burned, to
contrive convoluted Salvationist and Trinitarian doctrine (Augustine is said to
have written fourteen volumes on the Trinity). If intellectual gymnastics was
an Olympic sport, the early House of God fathers would have had a trove of gold
medals. It was in the industry of bathwater that the baby of Jesus’ Truths
drowned.
DIFFERENT STORIES
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
– mythos over logos – very important for any House which needs its inhabitants
to believe weird things in order to retain its power over them:
“ ‘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.
FAITH-ALTERING DIFFERENCES
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 just Jewish-awaited Messiah of Matthew – the warrior king, come with a
sword:
“ ‘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, more appealing to the wider Mediterranean
world, Saviour:
“ ‘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. He seems very much like a theologian – an early
Christian Churchman, perhaps? 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?” (10:34)
And some 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)
A MYSTERIOUS FAVOURITE
John, also uniquely (and intriguingly), introduces a
mysterious “favourite” of Jesus (13:23; 21:20-23). Even as he is hanging on the
cross, Jesus 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 to John, 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 had 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)
Here again we have Jesus’ mistaken belief – 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
More discrepancies of facts between the Gospels – the
inerrant word of God.
But, even through all the obvious embellishments and agenda
of competing factions, the glimmer of some “T” Truths peep from beneath the
Bible’s bushel of “t” truths.
Here endeth the Gospels.
******************************************
Time to consider the Gospels as a whole.
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-driven “t” truths that
went into writing the Gospels – the Jesus of fact from the Jesus of faith. The
Gospels (circa 70-120 AD) were written after Paul’s letters (c. 50’s AD) – even
after Paul’s death (c. early to mid 60’s A.D.) but appear before them in the
New Testament. The significance of this fact is that Paul was the chief
doctrinaire writer among Jesus’ followers and he influenced the Gospels – one
way or the other – they were written to support his ideas about Jesus, or to
put forward or bolster other ideas. Paul was definitely zealous and competitive,
and he created factions.
Several factions arose after Jesus’ death among his
followers. The two main factions were Paul and his followers, who turned more
and more towards the Gentile population for recruits, and the Jewish Jerusalem
faction, led by Jesus’ brother, James – who continued to focus mainly on their
Jewish brethren. We will see plenty of evidence of factions when we examine
Acts, and Letters. The point for us here, trying to find the real Jesus in the
Gospels, is that they were written when factions had developed among Jesus’
followers – and the main motivation for writing them seems to have been to
“authorise” certain points of view. In other words, factional “t” truths heavily
embellished the “T” Truth about Jesus.
“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 – by the Jesus of faith. 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 the
doctrines that he 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…”
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 “finding” him in 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 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 missions of firstly,
Peter, then increasingly, Paul. It is 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 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). Jesus’ apostles are regularly imprisoned and flogged.
But, according to Acts, resisting Christian
conversion could be dangerous too – as Herod demonstrated when he was struck
down by an angel of the Lord and “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, and 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 Acts
sees things more broadly:-
“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 the violent Jewish zealots and orthodox Jews overseen by the Sadducees –
and there was more of them – a whole world full!
MIRACLES
Peter and Paul also have control over the natural
world, and do several miracles. Peter heals many people 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.” (Op. cit. P. 145)
Something definitely unnatural happened to Saul/Paul
– a man just does not turn around so completely, going from prosecutor to
promoter in the course of a day – from the safety and prestige of a zealous
officer of a well-entrenched religion to the uncertain and dangerous life as
the main man of a competing sect. Paul was beaten and imprisoned many times for
his new belief – eventually losing his life because of it. He was definitely earnest
in his belief, but also undoubtedly a self-promoter – as can be plainly seen 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, the
idea of any Divine, at all, along with Paul’s god. Atheism needs theism to
exist – and Paul is theism by the bucketful.
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 originally
led by James 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) 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 of Mark and Matthew concentrated
on making Jesus appear to be the fulfilment of the Jewish Scriptures in order
to proselytise the Jewish population – 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, and the later Gospels of Luke and John changed the tune a
bit so the Gentiles were not excluded
We often forget that the Gospels and Acts were
written after Paul – and it seems that the motivation for writing the Gospels and
Acts was mainly to enter the factional disputes left in his wake – rather than
to record the “T” Truth of Jesus’ words and deeds for posterity.
Time to examine the Letters of the New Testament.
******************************
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 here is acknowledging that Joseph (who was
supposedly descended from David) conceived Jesus – but only “on the human
level”. Bit of a problem for Mary being a virgin then – visited only by an
angel? The Trinity doctrine needs a bit more work – which it got later – in
spades.
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 critics and 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)
In this way Paul tries to paint Jesus’ brutal execution
as not a defeat but somehow part of God’s plan – indeed, proof of God’s “love
towards us”. Paul also starts Salvationist doctrine by his assertion that we
shall “be saved through him from final retribution” – 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. No, religion killed Jesus because he
threatened its power. He did not die to “save” us – his death was just another
sin of religion – just one of many deaths at the hands of religion. Nor was Jesus’
death a sin of the Jews – he was a Jew; nor a sin of the Romans – Pilate did
all he could to avoid killing an innocent man, but the crowd whipped up by the
officers of religion demanded he die.
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 that they could control God through dietary laws, animal
sacrifices, correct worship, and keeping the Sabbath holy. He was a threat to the
entrenched power and status of the high priests. The Roman governor, Pilate,
wanted to let Jesus off but the priests insisted on his execution. No, again –
religion killed Jesus and Paul’s “we have
now been justified by Christ’s sacrificial death” is just more religion – and
a religion that went on to kill millions in an effort to enforce Paul’s cornball
doctrines.
Of course the question would have been asked of the
fathers of the Christian House of God – what exactly did good people have to be
“saved” from? To answer this Paul works up a 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. ”
(5:8).
Our “while we were yet sinners” – the
unavoidable, original stain of being 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 how
to dangle 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 is used constantly
and 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 truly 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 – a cut above the ordinary
cloth that Paul was plainly made of.
But, occasionally Paul seems to 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 is fine, but people
are evil so we need plenty of stick – carrot and stick, carrot and stick –
can’t have a “H” House just built on love and forgiveness, can we? 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. But what a House
it could have been if just founded on Jesus’ “Love, Forgive, Do unto others” –
a spiritual House of love, rather than the Darwinian House based on our animal survival
fears that it became.
FIRST LETTER OF PAUL TO THE CORINTHIANS
It didn’t take long for the followers of Jesus to
devolve into factions after his death:
“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 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 of Jesus’ followers he
carried out, or abetted, 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 the constant 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 both
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 just more Pauline doctrine
based on Old Testament myths. What is the soundness of any subsequent 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 seem to understand that he was
encouraging extinction for his inchoate movement – or was he also 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 editors, 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 would turn into a river of gold over the years:
“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 alleges he was celibate, and 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 spiritual + animal condition:
“Sown
as an animal body it is raised a spiritual body. If there is such a thing as an
animal body, there is also a spiritual body.” (15:44).
But Paul is not spiritual himself – the main rationale
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 belief 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 religions’ ultimately Darwinian
motive of animal survival – the raising of our animal bodies from death. The
hope of animal survival was the foundation of Christian beliefs then, and now.
Is Paul right, is Jesus’ Truth just the physical survival of the body – the
rest “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 – all 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 Paul’s 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? Some apologists for the Bible believe that the
Books of the Bible form independent sources – thus confirm each other, but they
copy from one another and all are driven by the same motive to proselytise rather
than to record. Acts and Paul’s letters do have a certain ring of authenticity
about them when describing Paul’s travels and travails and, on the balance of
probabilities, it seems to be largely true that Paul was persecuted for his
beliefs. 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 – 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? We can know
that he was vain, jealous, zealous, boastful, and sarcastic by his letters. 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?
Jesus had no doctrines, the doctrines of the “Christian”
House of God were Paul’s. Many residents of the House of God are practising
Paulinians, rather than Christians. We have already seen that his doctrines are
dodgy – can any “H” House built on them be sound? Again, consider how different
the history of that House could have been if it were built on Jesus’ simple
“Thou Shalt Love One Another; Turn The Other Cheek; Do Unto Others” – 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 have been for the various developing
factions to win these arguments by the authority of, supposedly, the very words
of Jesus. This could explain 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: the Judeo/Christian
House of God is undoubtedly built on the Bible, but what sort of God could dwell
within? Is it God or ourselves we have found? 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 – again – the tensions in
the evolving Christian House of God. There seemed to be two movements – a Jewish,
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:
“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 occasionally 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).
THE BEGINNINGS OF ANTI-SEMITISM
Something more sinister starts to emerge in Paul’s
letters:
“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.”? At 5:11 Paul had also spoken of “the offence of the cross”. Are we
starting to see the beginnings of Christian anti-Semitism which ended up in the Holocaust? It should never be forgotten that
Jesus was a Jew, he was popular among his fellow Jews – he was not
killed by “the Jews” – he was killed by religion because he was too popular
with the Jews. He was killed specifically by the Sadducee officers of the
Jewish religion because he threatened their power over the people, and their
status and prestige within society. One of the great motivators for the
officers of religion has always been the taking of the power and prestige of
God unto themselves. In his letters, we can see clearly that Paul was concerned
about his own status. No, Jesus was killed by religion, not “the Jews”.
THE PROBLEMS OF INFIGHTING
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 Paul was building. And the fighting was to be over convoluted,
incredible, inconsequential doctrine – “t” truths, not the “T” Truth. The
future of Christianity was destined to be bloody because there to be were
plenty more zealots like Paul in the House of God – people who were 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, Paul had more luck with the Gentiles around the eastern Mediterranean
world. Paul concocted doctrine to suit the market:
“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 had Jesus killed on a Roman cross? Incorrect, unfortunately – the
worst enmity was yet to come – centuries of persecution culminating in the 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 concerned
with power and status, 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).
“We who are
left alive shall join them.”? Paul obviously did not believe that he would
die – 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)
“Jewish myths”?
– rich from somebody like Paul who relied heavily on the Jewish myths to
construct his own “commandments of merely
human origin” – like the inferiority of women (Timothy 2:11-15, above), and
his doctrine of original sin justified by myth of Adam eating from the tree of
knowledge – and the doctrine of our need for Salvation based, in turn, on this
mythical original sin.
PAULINE LETTERS SUMMARY
Paul, with his zealotry, managed to turn the original
Jesus movement with its simple Truths of “Love; Forgive; Do unto others” – into
“Paulianity” – with its convoluted doctrines that Jesus never dreamed of. Paul
laid the foundations for the House of God, the construction of which was, 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 on what, in Paul’s pre-scientific day, was
seen as the “T” Truth – the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve – “S” Scripture.
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 over people?
PAUL’S LETTERS EVIDENCE THE NEED FOR THE WRITING OF
GOSPELS
Paul’s letters give evidence of the disputes 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, and we can
see the need to have something definitive in writing to authorise these
doctrines – the very words of Jesus – or even of God. The Gospels, as evidenced
by their differing and often contradictory accounts, 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 within 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.”
- From The
Because of the unreliability of the “word of God”
again, the 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
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 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 old rules brought no joy to the Hebrews. As we saw in our
examination of the Old Testament the Jews had been imprisoned by the Egyptians
and Babylonians, and subjugated by the Assyrians and Persians. Subsequently they
had been invaded by Alexander’s Macedonian Greeks and the Romans. Jesus is
portrayed as the new saviour, bringing better rules and new hope to the Jews:
“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)
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)
Your God?
JAMES
Most scholars accept that this letter was written by
James, the brother of Jesus. After Jesus’ death, James became the head of the Jewish
followers of Jesus in
If this epistle-writing James is indeed James, the
brother of Jesus, then none of the writers of the New Testament would know more
about the real Jesus and his words, than he. James seems much like how I
imagine the real Jesus to be – he is Jewish, wise, stresses “doing” (of good
works) over faith, the importance of love, and spouts no doctrine – nor the
later claims made about Jesus (for example the “I ams” of John). James sounds a
lot like the Jesus we meet occasionally in the Gospels – he is:
Jewish:
“Greetings
to the Twelve Tribes dispersed throughout the world.” (1:1)
Wise:
“be
quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to be angry.” (1:19)
Charitable:
“Religion
that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans
and widows in their distress…” (1:27)
Espousing the primacy of love:
“the
sovereign law laid down in Scripture, ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’ ”
(2:8).
Stressing the importance of doing, not just hearing –
doing over faith:
“But
be doers of the word, and not merely hearers… be not hearers who forget, but
doers who act – they will be blessed in their doing.” (1:22-25) “So faith by itself, if it has no works, is
dead.” (2:17)
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)
Today’s modern evangelical movements try to work up a
doctrine about wealth being OK. I wonder how they talk around James’ (and
Jesus’) fairly clear statements about rich people being fattened for slaughter?
Like Jesus, James was wrong about the imminence of
the “coming of the Lord”:
“be
patient and stout hearted, for the coming of the Lord is near.” (5:8)
1 PETER
Peter claims to be Simon – “apostle of Jesus Christ”. Peter has 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? He was nowhere near “the end” – religion had a long (and murderous)
future – Jesus was not the last to be killed by it. The time had not come for
the “judgement to begin”, millions were yet to be slaughtered 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).
In subscribing to the old creation myths, Peter showed
that he was not Divinely inspired – just floundering along with the usual
incorrect human myths of the day. There is some excuse for Peter, but modern
evangelists still believe in Noah – because it is in the Bible – the word of
God.
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).
Lust, every one must have, it is necessary to
continue the species. The Church makes a living out keeping us guilty of the
natural animal factors in the human equation – our “abominable lusts”. Why not raise
our spiritual consciousness, release the joy that can be had from animal
passions if we combine them with love for others?
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”
from our Original sin – but is it the Truth? Are religions concerned at all
about elevating our existence by finding Truths about the human condition, or
just about power over us?
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 was the “last hour” was evidenced 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!
For John, some of us are children of the devil, and
some God’s children:
“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 last
sentence: “For God is love” – instead of the brutal butcher found throughout
the Bible?
John also informs us:
“But
if a man says, ‘I love God’, while hating his brother, he is a liar.”
(4:20)
Fair enough statement – but who is our “brother”? Like
all religions, it is always, unfortunately, 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).
Proof to Jude that
the end is fast approaching :
“In the final
age there will be men who pour scorn on religion, and follow their own godless
lusts.” (Jude18)
Why not “pour scorn
on religion”? It killed Jesus and, in the hands of hateful religious people it
went on to kill millions more.
Jude turns hate
into an art form, setting new standards in hate by suggesting even that clothing
might be a suitable candidate 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.
******************************
THE LETTERS
What have we learned in our examination of the House
of God from the Letters of the New Testament?
The Letters are the correspondence of some of the
early House of God’s fathers and theoreticians with their scattered flock. In
them we see the building of a religion – a House. The followers of Jesus, doctrine
by doctrine, block by block, turned their little movement into an “H” House. But,
as time passed, the further this religion formed in the name of Jesus actually got
from Jesus, the more the memory of his ideas and acts diverged. Factions
supporting differing ideas arose – and problems for unity.
Because these essays are ultimately an exploration
for “T” Truth, what have we learned about Truth from the Letters? Not a lot.
They are largely the “t” truths of others. In them we see the beginning of the
process of drowning of any Truths that Jesus brought (about such things as the
primacy of love, forgiving, doing) in the bathwater of doctrine – especially in
Paul’s letters.
James’ letter seems to be the closest to the real
Jesus.
“The real Jesus”? – now that we are at the end of all
that was written about Jesus in the New Testament, we can consider what we can
know about the real Jesus.
JESUS
At the beginning of this exploration of the New Testament I said that Jesus, whatever you personally believe about him, was arguably the most influential man in human history. Anybody who can come out of