With the advent of Christianity, you could say "God" issued a new and improved, expanded version of his book. Why a god's book would need to be revised is a good question. As to whether the new material is any better than the old, my verdict is . . . maybe kinda sorta, but not really. Like a Frankenstein sent to charm school, there is a superficial improvement. But ultimately what you are left with in the Bible is a patchwork of sophomoric teachings coupled with an obsolete worldview. Not to mention the hell thing. Which was a revision that hardly qualifies as a step forward.
Consider the following six verses from Matthew.
1) But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (5:28, King James Version)
You got a Y-chromosome-you're guilty. What male can look at a sexy babe and not think and/or feel, "Now that's one sexy babe!?" The answer: A male lacking the urge to make whoopee and thus make babies, intentionally or not. Of course, that you have lust in your heart, or in your pants for that matter, doesn't mean you will act upon it. And that should be the issue: actions.
2) Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourself treasures in heaven, where neither moth not rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal. (6:19-20)
This preaching is a salve for the beaten and the broke--those early lower-class believers living in a land regularly torn by war, in cities and villages oppressed by the Roman Empire and the ruling classes. For them, relief and luxury will come later. Today's affluent American,however, need not worry. It is metaphor. Their god is not going curse the Brooks Brothers suits in the closet nor condemn the Mercedes in the garage. And thanks to scientific advancements, believers can purchase insecticide at the local hardware store for the moth problem and a can of Rustoleum for the rust.
3) Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.(7:7)
Wouldn't that be nice. Sure, expend effort at something and your efforts are likely to bring progress. But, "it will be given to you"? Every day countless Christians engage in honest asking. And they get a null result. My translation: "Aquarius through Pisces--You are a person with sincere desires; you will encounter advances among your setbacks."
4) And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus seeing their faith said unto the sick of the palsy; Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee.(9:2)
Rather than the germ theory of disease, this is the ancient "sin theory." In some circles today, the sin theory has been updated and revised into the "energy field" theory." You sick? Your energy field is out of whack--needs to be re-balanced. Thankfully, today we have science-based medicine to rely upon.
5) And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. (10:14)
It seems you don't want to be defiled by the dirt of nonbelievers. Just as holy water has greater restorative powers than tap water, apparently dirty dirt might trip you up. My translation: "To those who don't agree with thee, turn up thy nose." Is this really a transcendent teaching?
6) Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. (10:34-35)
So speaks the supposed prince of peace, the "moral philosopher" who is all about family values.
Have I taken a verse out of context? In a sense, yes. But this is what preachers do every Sunday. They stitch together assorted verses to generate a message that suits their desires and needs while failing to provide any wider context: historical, anthropological, religious, philosophical, etc.
Is the New Testament a good book? It depends on what you compare it to.
Thanksgiving is no Last Supper. Maybe that's why there are so many leftovers. In the wake of this wonderful celebration of roasted bird, I have some important theological questions about what would Jesus do for Thanksgiving.
For one, what would he be thankful for? That his father treated him like a lamb and sent him to be slaughtered by humans? What if Jesus wanted a normal life -- a wife and children, a nice house with a two-donkey garage, and summer vacations on the Dead Sea?
I wonder, might Jesus say this as "grace":
Thank you, Self, for saving all of humanity, except of course those at the far reaches of the earth who haven't heard of me. And excluding those who refuse to believe the stories about me. Which really makes me mad, so I send them to hell without pumpkin pie for dessert and eternal punishment. Amen.
If Jesus attended one of the large Thanksgiving affairs I experienced in my childhood, the turkey weighing nearly as much as me, would he have watched any football? What team would have had chosen to help win?
I suspect Jesus wouldn't have touched the turkey. For Jesus was a Jew and the bird on our table wasn't kosher. Thanks to our French-Canadian heritage, there was ground pork in the stuffing. Because pork is "unclean," maybe Jesus would have had to settle for nibbling on a wedge of canned cranberry jelly and some mashed turnips.
Or maybe he would have said, "To heck with my dad's old decrees about cleanliness."
Oh my gosh! What about the bathroom? Would we have needed to give Jesus instructions on how to operate a toilet? Would we have had to explain that we use toilet paper today, and we highly recommend that he do, too? That would have been awkward.
Then there is the matter of the fork. The everyday-eating utensil that we take for granted wasn't invented and in widespread use until hundreds of years after Jesus last left the table.
Would we have had to give Jesus lessons on how to use the fork, or would we instead have just tried to not look surprised when he ate with his hands -- as was customary in his day? Maybe mom and dad would have let us eat with our hands, too, so Jesus wouldn't be the only one. Shoving mashed potatoes into our mouths with our fingers would have been a fun change. But messy.
Here's an interesting tangent. According to Wikipedia, and other sources I'm presently unable to recall, when people started using the innovative utensil in Europe, the Catholic Church was strongly opposed to the fork.
"God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks -- his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to Him to substitute artificial metallic forks for them when eating."
Back then, the fork was a serious issue. Like gay marriage is today. Neither are "natural." So both should be banned.
For the upcoming election I think the same states that have anti-gay marriage legislation on their ballots should add anti-fork amendments.
It seems "the church" consistently opposes progress. In hindsight it may be amusing. But to those of us who view homosexuals as no less human and deserving of the same respect and rights as the rest of us, what's going on today is not just another silly foible of the religiously wrong.
Finally on Thanksgiving Day, I wonder, would Jesus help do the dishes? Some verses of the Bible seem to suggest he would, while others send another message. Jesus speaks out for the meek, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven, where there are no dishes to be scrubbed. At least that's my guess. Jesus talked of equality. Yet he also said it was perfectly fine for some women to wash his feet with expensive perfume. And then he sent them to make him a sandwich. (Or did he?) So I don't know if Jesus would help with the dishes.
If Jesus did help clean up, someone would need to instruct him how to use Tupperware and whether or not the plates should be rinsed before placing them in the dishwasher?
With Jesus at your Thanksgiving celebration, at least you wouldn't have to worry about running out of wine. But what about beer? Could Jesus turn seltzer into Michelob Ultra? (Seltzer into Guinness? No, that's impossible.)
Prayer is typically employed to entreat a god into intervening in earthly affairs on your behalf: cure a loved one of disease, cause a hurricane to change its path so other poor suckers get nailed, make money fall from the sky, etc. This type of prayer works only when rare hits are counted and the frequent null results (misses) are not.
Today's heretical topic: Why does the Christian god fail to even semi-consistently live up to Matthew 7:7?
Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
Will your prayer be answered? It's as likely as a roll of the dice. (Unless, of course, praying for something you want makes you then behave differently, helping to bring about the desired outcome.)
In 2005 Pope John Paul died, as all animals eventually do. For much of his late life John Paul suffered from Parkinson's disease. Which is a hell of a holy thank-you for a job well done, if you ask me. Prayer may be good for psychosomatic afflictions, but if you've got a real malady, put your 'faith' in medical science. And even then you may be out of luck.
If Catholicism were an instrument of a god, wouldn't this god choose to use it effectively? Why cure some kid in backwoods Tennessee of a gimp leg? Why not, Alakazaam! and Halleluiah!, transform the Pope's sputtering, run-down body into one as fabulous as a young Fabio? Like some hunk of jaw-dropping powers, the Pope could have ripped through his white robe, revealing a tanned, flexed chest and six-pack abs. This would have provided indisputable evidence to the millions who regularly press their palms together that the activity is more than emotionally-satisfying busywork.
Why pray for health? It works no better than chance and what remission/recovery rates predict. Need obvious evidence? The hospitals are chock full of Christians.
Why pray for wealth? Christian towns and Christian counties and Christian states and Christian nations are no wealthier than their heathen counterparts (controlling, as much as possible, for other variables).
Can Matthew be accused of stretching the truth? Well, no. There would have to be some truth in his proclamation to stretch. And there isn't any. At least none of the supernatural variety. The writer of the Matthew Gospel was both deluded and wrong.
Many people put the Bible on a pedestal, as if it were a perfect document, filled with wisdom. To those who think so, I say, Read it--all of it.
Oh, sure, there are the occasional pearls of wisdom, such as: Thou shalt not covet they neighbor's donkey. Nor wife.
Bible worshipers habitually use one or two dozen words very selectively clipped from their revered book to support some position on X, Y, or Z. Should women be ordained as ministers? You can find a few passages that can be construed as supporting this, many more in opposition. The answer to the question of the ordainment of women is then: a) yes b) no c) neither of the above d) all of the above.
One Bible -- so many possibilities. Every week ministers, priests, and preachers string a few "pearls" of what they consider biblical wisdom together to hang their sermon upon.
Once, when in the library lobby at the college where I taught, I picked up a copy of a free Christian newsletter. The lead article "What Do I Owe These People?" for the week's issue of Gospel Minutes, was a transcribed sermon. In it the author, David Thurman, explored the attitude Christians should take toward their church. The subtitles to the long article consisted of these points. 1. Don't Offend It 2. Build It 3. Proclaim It 4. Motivate It 5. Put Up with It 6. Defend It
To add divine authority to his points, in each of the sub-sections the writer spliced in a passage from the Bible, chapter and verse. That some of these "pearls of wisdom" were contradictory to each other was glaringly obvious. At least to me. I wondered why other readers of the rag wouldn't scratch their head in wonderment upon encountering a bald case of something not making sense.
In the section, "Don't Offend It," the preacher used 1 Corinthians to make this point: Christians are not to Associate with those who call themselves Christians but do not live like it. You give offense to the church when you choose to sin.
One page later, under "Put Up with It," the very same preacher picks a gem from Ephesians to argue this: As believers we are to put up with each other. That means we tolerate each other, in spite of our failings....the church is not perfect, it is full of people who still struggle with sin.
In the above passages we've got six plus six equaling six. First, don't hang out with those who sin, because you give offense to the church. Second, tolerate each other because the church is not perfect. In fact, it is full of sinners.
Confused? Allow me to translate: Don't associate with sinners because you give offense to an entity that is imperfect and full of sinners.
At its very foundation, and with each story built above, religion relies upon shared values and beliefs. Preaching largely consists of the neatly circumscribed reasoning used to safely promote one's own set of values and beliefs.
In the Bible you will not find the book "The Catholic Gospel," nor "The Baptist Gospel." Etc. (Or more specifically, "The 1950s Alabama Baptists Gospel" . . . "The 1970s Massachusetts Catholic Gospel" . . . etc.) Rather, each congregation mines the pages of the Bible for material that supports their present brand of belief, their current set of values.
One reason why the Bible is such a popular book is precisely because it presents no perfectly clear and consistent message. To just about any important question of the day, one can find a multitude of answers. Which makes the document not correct, but handy. Like a social tool of the Swiss Army knife variety.
From the earliest members through today, Christians have shaped the Bible and formed their official narrative so that John the Baptist played a mere preparatory role for the glorious ascendancy of Jesus. The truth may have been quite different. Through a careful reading of the New Testament, and consulting non-canonized writings (i.e., Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus), one can see that Jesus was just another vender in the marketplace of wonder-working prophets.
In Matthew, chapter 11, an imprisoned John the Baptist instructs two of his disciples to go to Jesus and question him. Jesus instructs the disciples to give this response: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them (11:5 King James Version). This was Jesus' indirect way of saying, "While you play in water with your baptism gig, I do some real impressive stuff."
(As a smarty-pants tangent: Notice how the parallelism in the above passage falters? The blind receives what he or she needs: sight. The lame receives what he or she needs: to walk. But what does the poor receive? The gospel preached to him/her. Which is less like an edible fortune cookie, more like a strip of white paper that reads, Prosperity awaits you. Lucky numbers: 13, 0, -6.)
The gospel of Mark opens on this very point: "John the Baptist Prepares the Way." So we see that rather than a bonifide prophet in his own right, leading his own movement, John the Baptist becomes a mere part in the play of Jesus Christ Superstar.
What does the Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus, a manuscript written by a Jewish historian roughly 90 years after Jesus' death, say about the Christian Superstar?
Herod, who feared lest the great influence John had over the people might put it into his power and inclination to raise a rebellion, (for they seemed ready to do any thing he should advise,) thought it best, by putting him to death. [via be-heading]
Oh wait, that was about John the Baptist. In the historical writings of Josephus the passage about John the soul-washer is roughly 260 words in length.
James, brother of Jesus, also has a passage dedicated to him. The "brother of Jesus" part, by the way, is used as a customary means of identifying the particular James in question, as in "brother of Fred, son of Ralph." James became a leader of Jewish sect that might be described as Christian-ish Judaism. The passage about him is roughly 360 words long.
The passage about Jesus? At most, roughly 125 words. And that is disputed, because it seems words favorable to Jesus and crucial to Christian dogma were later inserted into Antiquities. How do they know? The passage contains some vocabulary and style inconsistent with the rest of the manuscript--precisely in those strings of words one might suspect were "fudged." An Arabic translation lacking the insert weighs in at about 110 words. (See excerpts below.)
It seems that though allegedly Jesus walked on water and rose from the dead, he failed to leave much of a tell-tail trace of his greatness in the few historical writings of the time.
As for John the Batiste, saying he prepared the way for Jesus is, to me, a way of poetically hijacking the decapitated movement John lead. Had John not lost his head, who knows what today's religious landscape would be like.
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The suspicious version of the Antiquities passage about Jesus -
Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. [emphases added, all quoted text found at Wikipedia]
Another version that strikes many a religious scholar as more authentic-
For he says in the treatises that he has written in the governance of the Jews: "At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. And those who had become his disciples did not abandon their loyalty to him. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. Accordingly they believed that he was the Messiah, concerning whom the Prophets have recounted wondersl"
As a skeptic, the second strikes me as more likely historical, particularly when the historian has a more objective/scientific bent, as good historians do. "His conduct" and "they reported" is good reporting, compared to the equivalent passages in the first version.
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